HOW TO Capture text with TextSniper

Inspect the menu

When you run TextSniper, it puts an icon in the Menu Bar, enabling you to access its features. It can also connect to your iPhone or iPad, which is useful if you want to use TextSniper on a scanned document.

Set the language

TextSniper defaults to English but there’s also built–in support for scanning text in a number of other languages. If you wish, you can also disable the notifications you get when text has been captured.

Set the shortcuts

Although we’re using the Menu Bar for clarity, TextSniper is best when you use keyboard shortcuts: by default, Cmd+Shift+2. You can change that in the app’s preferences — add new shortcuts for other features, too.

Find your text

TextSniper can extract text from anything on screen: an image, a PDF, an application window, or an ebook. Simply go to the page you want to capture and use the Menu Bar or shortcut to capture the text.

Get a thumbs up

If you haven’t disabled the notification, you’ll now see this message. You can now go to another page or image and extract the text from that. TextSniper adds captured text to the clipboard without erasing what’s there.

Paste the text

You can now paste the text just as you would in any other app; here we’re pasting an extract into Notes. TextSniper tries to replicate formatting such as line breaks, but it can get confused with complex layouts.