OCR Options for macOS - On Screen, In Images, On the Clipboard, In PDFs

When you're faced with text that you can't select in the conventional way on your Mac (meaning with the cursor), there are several options. They all work in slightly different ways, and I use the one most appropriate for the task.

# Live Text Recognition

The operating system has a feature called **Live Text Recognition** , an on-device computer vision feature that detects and extracts text from images and video so you can interact with it like normal text.

It uses Apple's Neural Engine to perform optical character recognition; OCR, directly on your Mac. That means you can:

* Select and copy text from photos in **Finder**, **Preview**, **Photos**, or screenshots
* Click phone numbers to call via iPhone integration
* Translate detected text instantly
* Look up addresses, track packages, or search highlighted words

The key idea is this: pixels become selectable characters without sending your data to the cloud. It quietly turns static images into searchable, actionable information.

# Cleanshot X

My go to choice is [Cleanshot X](https://appaddict.app/post/cleanshot-x), mainly because it's always running on my Mac anyway. Live Text Recognition requires you to open an image in an app like Preview first. Cleanshot X let's you select any region and get text immediately. The downside is that Cleanshot X is a paid app.

# Raycast

There is a [Raycast](https://appaddict.app/post/how-to-get-the-most-from-raycast) extension called \*\*Easy OCR \*\*that combines the features of Live Text Recognition and Cleanshot X. After you invoke it, Easy OCR can be used on an image you've already captured, the clipboard or an area you select on screen. Just search for it in the Raycast Store. **(Free)**

# Text Sniper

https://preview.redd.it/29xkufgus7mg1.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=04e77ac36a283dec10f50be0230a31e0b9293892

Even if you have the tools previously mentioned, there should still be room in your toolbox for [TextSniper,](https://textsniper.app/) an OCR app for YouTube videos, PDFs, images, online courses, screencasts, presentations, webpages, video tutorials, photos, etc. Like Cleanshot X, you don't have to make screen captures and open them in Preview to grab text. In my experience it works better than alternatives like PDF Pen, Adobe products, Google Docs etc. As long as you can draw a rectangle around the text, it doesn't matter if it's rotating, angled or shadowed.

**Unique Features**

* Removes line breaks
* Built-in text to speech
* Additive clipboard feature if the text you are trying to capture can't obtained on one go
* Removes hyphens from words divided across a line.
* Decodes standard bar and QR codes. Enabling a keyboard shortcut lets you turn those into numbers.

Text Sniper is currently [on sale for $2.](https://appaddict.app/post/bundlehunt-s-first-sale-of-2026-is-live-lifetime-licenses-only) That should be a no brainer. It is also available as part of SetApp.

# OCRmyPDF

OCRmyPDF is an open-source command-line tool that **adds a text layer** to scanned PDFs while keeping the image intact. It creates **searchable PDF/A** output. You can use it via [this Apple Shortcut.](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/733adc2e2add42a89d00a889dbdef244).

https://redd.it/1rgzllm
@macappsbackup

macOS Unfold - Quick Look for Folders, Archives, Source Code and multiple other file formats

Hiya peeps!

A little while ago I made a post here asking about Unfold and what extensions people would want to preview using Quick Look. The feedback was genuinely helpful and shaped a lot of decisions while building Unfold, so thank you to everyone who shared suggestions

Unfold is something my friend (u/isolume) and I built to make Quick Look more capable when working with folders, archives, source code, and other unsupported file types.

Problem:

Quick Look extensions on macOS are fairly fragmented - most plugins support only a single format, some are outdated or abandoned, and managing multiple extensions just to preview different files quickly becomes messy. Customization is also often limited or inconsistent.

Comparison:

As compared to existing solutions, Unfold takes a consolidated approach by supporting folders, archives, source code, markdown, ebooks, and several other formats within a single Quick Look extension.

Notable Features:

Folder previews (3 layout styles)
Archive previews: ZIP, RAR, TAR, 7Z + multipart archives (r00)
CBZ / CBR / EPUB previews with Table of Contents
Markdown previews with TOC, Mermaid diagrams, math equations & syntax highlighting
Source code previews with syntax highlighting, line numbers & text selection

[Unfold QuickLook Demo \(Light Mode\)](https://preview.redd.it/a7gaet06l9mg1.png?width=2940&format=png&auto=webp&s=bf9f3d96a4a0ac4d66cc19857e51097a3f1f1c69)

Privacy Note:

Unfold runs fully sandboxed. All previews happen locally on your device, and the app only makes network requests for license verification.

Pricing and Purchase:

$7 lifetime (30% launch discount — regular price $10)
One-time purchase including all future updates.
7 Day Trial included (no CC info required)

Website: https://flew.gg/projects/unfold
App Store version is currently on the way and should be available soon.

Changelog: https://flew.gg/projects/unfold/changelog

Feature Request: https://features.flew.gg/

AI Disclaimer: Code Completion + Tests generation

Edit: Added missing trial information.

https://redd.it/1rh7fhy
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Keeper - Fast photo culling (Alternative to Aftershoot, Photo Mechanics)

https://redd.it/1rgx8d5
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Octavo — turn PDFs into booklets

Today I'm releasing Octavo, my first indie app since I left big tech last year.

# The problem it solves:

PDF imposition — which is a term from the printing industry for arranging pages onto sheets so they're in the right order after folding. Essentially it lets you make booklets, along with a bunch of other features for cleaning up and laying out your PDFs.

# Comparison:

Some printer drivers let you make booklets, but they usually offer no control over placement or margins.

InDesign has a booklet making output, but it requires your content to already be in InDesign, and all the properties are set numerically with the preview on a different tab.

My closest competitor app is probably Create Booklet 2. We've mostly got feature parity I think, but I believe Octavo's multi-pane task based interface plus ability to visually drag margins makes it easier to use. Also, Octavo has a source cleanup step before getting to the point of laying out pages, which lets you correct for bad scans before placing them for printing.

# Pricing:

$25 lifetime license. Website; Mac App Store

Octavo is a free download with the unlock via in-app purchase: in the free version you can make mini zines, and you can try out all the other imposition styles (like booklets) with a banner added to the printouts/exports.

# Roadmap:

Octavo is fairly complete, and feature additions will depend on user feedback. The main thing I didn't get time for in version 1 is creep compensation.

My philosophy with pay-once consumer software, however, is that you shouldn't buy it based on future features. Octavo lets you try it out before buying, so you can see if it meets your needs!

# AI Disclaimer:

Use in development: Code completion.

There are no AI features in the app.

# Other notes:

This is an 'old school' Mac app built in AppKit. I've been a developer on Apple platforms for a long time, since well before the iPhone came on the scene. I tried to capture the 'soul' of a good Mac app rather than adding cross-platform compromises. (Not to say those compromises are never the right answer — I was lucky here that printing is something people tend to do on the Mac, so I didn't have to worry about limiting my audience!).

https://redd.it/1rg7l93
@macappsbackup

TogglePresent - distraction-free screen sharing for macOS

MacOS app I built to fix one tiny but stressful problem: screen sharing anxiety.

The problem it solves:
When you're presenting on Zoom, Google Meet, or in-person via AirPlay, your desktop becomes public. Notifications pop up. Private tabs are visible. The wrong window gets shared. You’re constantly thinking about what might show up instead of focusing on what you're saying.

TogglePresent creates a clean, controlled presentation environment on your Mac. Hide distractions. Control what’s visible. Present with confidence.

Comparison:
You can manually turn on Do Not Disturb, hide your Dock, close apps, and reorganize windows every time.

Or you can use built-in presentation modes in apps like Zoom or Google Meet, but they don’t give you system-level control over your desktop.

Some people create a separate macOS user just for presenting. That works… but it’s friction-heavy.

TogglePresent is designed to be instant. One toggle. Clean screen. No mental overhead.

Pricing:
$4.99 lifetime license
TogglePresent

Roadmap:
Version 1 focuses on rock-solid presentation mode switching.

That said, I believe in shipping complete, useful software. You shouldn’t buy it based on promises. If it solves your problem today, great. If not, no pressure.

AI Disclaimer:
Use in development: Code completion.

There are no AI features in the app.

Other notes:
This is a focused, native macOS app built with Apple frameworks, lightweight, fast, and designed to feel at home on the Mac. No electron wrappers, no unnecessary background services. Just a tool that does one job extremely well.

If you present often, whether you’re a founder, student, teacher, or indie dev, I built this for you.

https://redd.it/1rgduit
@macappsbackup

favorite lifetime purchase mac apps?

I’ve been rethinking how I spend money on software lately.



Instead of piling on more subnoscriptions, I’m starting to look for apps that offer lifetime purchases. The kind you buy once, set up properly, and just keep using for years without thinking about it.



So far, two that have been absolutely worth it for me:



Alfred: basically the backbone of how I use my Mac at this point. Workflows alone make it worth it.
BetterTouchTool: insane level of customization for gestures, window management, shortcuts, etc it makes everything feel more “mine.”





I’m curious what other lifetime purchases people here feel great about long term. Not apps that were cool for six months, but tools you still use daily or weekly years later and would happily buy again.



Especially interested in:



Productivity tools
Dev tools
Creative utilities
Anything that improves focus or flow





What are your “buy once, never regret” apps?

https://redd.it/1rhd9x5
@macappsbackup

[DEV] I'm giving away 50% off promo codes for Click2Minimize! Just looking for some honest feedback.

https://redd.it/1rh7xcm
@macappsbackup

PXL Cam Creative Virtual Camera

https://reddit.com/link/1rgk69o/video/fckrtauoy3mg1/player

Problem:
Solving boring meetings by showing gifs and memes when everyone's mic and camera is off, makes an easy way to respond

Compare:

OBS - not a replacement for OBS, but (hopefully) lower learning curve - for people who just want to show a thumbs up gif in their meeting, or add an infinitely animating background

Pricing:

Free, no in app purchase / subnoscription https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pxl-cam/id6505083993?mt=12

Changelog:

see the app store link, it's been on the store since 2024

AI Disclaimer: Human Validated [Until recently was no AI, but then used claude for a feature\]

Creates a virtual webcam, so works in any meeting software - google meets, zoom, slack, signal and anything that lets you select a camera.

Load in images, gifs, find them super quick using fuzzy search, and share them as a virtual camera in any meeting app. Find your own images from the web, or itch.io etc..

You can also add your webcam, and cutout your background. And when you add PXL Cam itself as a camera input it creates feedback..

Has some scale / transform settings, and you can create infinitely animating backgrounds using the tiling button and pressing the arrow button in the offset controls to set it to "animated" mode.. (trying to make a better UI...)

Fuzzy search example.. Have image named: cute_pixel_sweets

you can type any of: "cute" or "pixel" or "sweets", and it will show up in the search list.. So very quick for finding the right gif at the right time.

The main roadmap right now is:

* make the UI more streamlined and easier to understand
* add onboarding
* be able to save layers into groups (if you make a setup you really like, will not be saved next time you open the app..)
* add gif playback controls (be able to scrub through the different frames of a gif, or set loop points)
* native text field (currently only English text input is supported)
* More key commands (ideally you could do everything with the mouse)
* custom key commands (currently you can not change key commands)
* adding more controls for the second display window
* being able to share content from other screens
* renaming files in the app, and adding file metadata (i.e, have an image of donkey cong smiling and giving thumbs up, but noscript is donkey_cong, so adding 'thunbs up' or 'nintendo' tags so they show up in search when you search.
* Be able to change the image of the brachiosaurus (background image of the camera extension when it's off... It is a pain to update the camera extension....)

Oh and in the video, the image seems flipped in the google meet, but what other people see in the meeting is not flipped..

**lowpoly n64 style Mark ZuckerBORG not included**
Using keycastr for showing key presses in the demo video

https://redd.it/1rgk69o
@macappsbackup

Lumen — capture → organise → prioritise [todos, notes, meetings, ideas]

https://redd.it/1rgukw2
@macappsbackup

I built a free, fully offline speech-to-text app for macOS – AiTranscribe OS

Problem: Most speech-to-text tools for Mac either require an internet connection, charge a subnoscription, or both — meaning your audio is always leaving your device.

Compare: Unlike SuperWhisper ($10/mo) or Whisper Trannoscription ($10 one-time but closed source), AiTranscribe is completely free, fully open source, and runs 100% offline. It also supports NVIDIA Parakeet alongside Whisper — a model most competitors haven't adopted yet — giving noticeably better accuracy for English at similar speeds.

Pricing: Free, forever. No tiers.
🔗 https://github.com/Ljove02/AIT-AiTranscribe-MacOS/releases/tag/v0.1.0

AI Disclaimer: Vibe Coded

---

First major open source project – feedback, bug reports, and contributions very welcome. A ⭐ on GitHub helps a lot for visibility!

⚠️ App isn't notarized (student, $99/yr Apple cert), first launch needs a right-click open or one terminal command — full instructions in the README.

https://redd.it/1rhde62
@macappsbackup

[OS] PasteClip — a minimal Paste-like clipboard manager (free)

https://redd.it/1rhm61c
@macappsbackup

Screen recording apps. What are you actually using?

I am looking for recommendations on screen recording tools. Preferably one time payment app.

I know about Cleanshot X and the built in QuickTime recording, but both feel pretty limited and I want something a bit more purpose built. (ScreenStudio is expensive)

What I am looking for:

1. Easy to start

2. Webcam preview/overlay no the recording. Change background of webcam recording too

3. Pause feature

4. Zoom in on the mouse cursor or other places while recording, automatically or manually

5. Show key presses on screen

6. Lightweight effects like click highlights and cursor emphasis

7. Ideally an inbuilt editor for quick trims, callouts, and basic cleanup

What are you using and suggest for this use case?

https://redd.it/1rhrcg8
@macappsbackup

OS appi18n – Lightweight CLI tool to convert between .xcstrings ↔ .lproj for better i18n collaboration & AI translation

I created a small CLI tool called appi18n to solve the pain points of using String Catalogs (.xcstrings) in team + AI translation workflows.

Why?

- Single .xcstrings file → frequent git conflicts
- Hard to split translation work among people
- Too large for feeding entire file to AI models (token limits, interruptions)

What it does

- Bidirectional conversion: .xcstrings ⇄ well-structured .lproj folders
- Much friendlier for Git collaboration and batch AI translation
- Still lets you enjoy Xcode's auto-extraction + visual translation status
- Also includes preview HTML generation, status check, clean-up, etc.

Repo & Homebrew install:
👉 https://github.com/jaywcjlove/appi18n

brew install jaywcjlove/tap/appi18n

The following shows example commands for adding internationalization files of a new app to the current repository's maintenance, including operations like importing files and adding new languages.

# 1️⃣ Extract .xcstrings localization file
$ appi18n extract ~/git/IconedApp/Iconed
# 2️⃣ Convert .xcstrings to .lproj for maintenance
$ appi18n to-lproj
# 3️⃣ Add French (fr) language to Iconed app
$ appi18n langs iconed fr
# 4️⃣ Update all .lproj content back to .xcstrings
$ appi18n to-xcstrings
# 5️⃣ Also update when language matches base language
$ appi18n to-xcstrings --no-skip-default-value
# ✅ 💯 Replace .xcstrings files in Xcode with the updated ones

This is a preview of my app localizations generated using appi18n:
👉 https://wangchujiang.com/app-i18n/index.html

Happy to hear feedback, especially from other indie macOS/iOS devs who maintain multiple apps or use AI for localization.


https://redd.it/1rhrgyk
@macappsbackup

AraMultiVideoPlayer A video player that allows infinite playback of multiple videos simultaneously.

https://reddit.com/link/1rhrckh/video/7f79a1tfzdmg1/player

Hi everyone,

A few years ago, I made a mobile app called MultiVideoPlayer for iOS and Android that lets you play multiple videos at the same time.

Recently, I released a macOS version and added some key features like multi AB repeat and layout save/load.

The app itself does not include any videos. You can load your own video files and arrange them however you like.

Key features:

Infinite loop playback
AB repeat (including multiple AB sections)
Save and load custom layouts
Videos are muted by default when loaded
Play/pause all videos at once
Control videos individually

The macOS app includes a free tier with limited points.
If you need more, you can unlock them via in-app purchase.
I initially planned to support the free version with ads, but I haven’t found a suitable macOS ad solution yet.

If my app is useful to you, I’d love to hear your feedback or suggestions for improvement.

Mac Free : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/aramultivideoplayer/id6752670863?l=ko&mt=12
Mac Paid : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/aramultivideoplayerpro/id6752816898?l=ko&mt=12
Website(for mobile) : https://dalnim.github.io/multivideoplayer/

https://redd.it/1rhrckh
@macappsbackup