Latest Microsoft PowerToy to Support Copying Text From Images in Windows
A new PowerToy could make it easier than ever for Windows users to pull text from images.
The utility is called PowerOCR(Opens in a new window), which is fitting, since it's a PowerToy that relies on optical character recognition (OCR) to function. It was created by a mechanical engineer named Joseph Finney, who says PowerOCR allows Windows users "to perform OCR anywhere on screen by selecting a rectangular region, clicking a word, or right-clicking an image file and selecting PowerOCR."
It's currently in development and the initial version of PowerOCR won't support all of those features. As of Aug. 16, the ability to invoke the utility by right-clicking an image hasn't been implemented yet, Finney says.
Windows Central notes(Opens in a new window) that Microsoft has implemented OCR in some of its apps (the most notable example being OneNote(Opens in a new window)) but Windows doesn't have a dedicated tool for pulling text from images.
That was also true on Mac until Apple introduced a feature called Live Text with macOS Monterey. Live Text makes it easy to retrieve text from an image and perform a variety of actions on the copied text.
PowerOCR makes a similar—albeit more limited—tool available on Windows. There's no word on when the PowerToy will be available, but development is ongoing, and its progress can be tracked on GitHub(Opens in a new window).
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