Press ⌃⇧T, drag a box over any text on your screen, and paste it anywhere. Even in videos, scanned PDFs, images and apps that won’t let you select text.
Download for MacCopy the slide of a paused lecture video into Notes.
…and that’s where the sugar actually gets made.
Bio revision
Today at 09:41
ANNUAL REPORT 2025
How we work
Remote work changed the way we
collaborate: meetings got shorter,
but written messages (emails, chats,
quick notes) nearly doubled in
just two years.
So we reviewed our tools and habits,
team by team, to protect the time
everyone needs for focused work.
3
To: Product team
Subject: Quote from the annual report
Guest Wi-Fi
Network: Harbour Coffee
Password: blue-harbour-2026
Trip to Lisbon
Today at 09:41
Thursday, 7 pm
Mac Makers Night
Short talks, good coffee and a lot of keyboard shortcuts.
Scan for the slides
Pluck text off your screen
After a capture, a small message shows how many words were copied. Press Edit to see the text, fix a word, copy it again, hear it read aloud or translate it. Prefer to always see the text first? Turn that on in Settings.
Quarterly revenue grew 12% to $4.2 million, led by the new annual plan in Canada and the UK.
Try it: edit the text, then press Copy, Speak or Translate.
Translate turns the text into another language with Apple Translation, on your Mac (macOS 15 or later). macOS downloads each language once; after that it works offline.
Look Up shows a word in the dictionary built into macOS, offline too.
Search the web opens a search in your browser with Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing or Ecosia, whichever you pick in Settings. Your text leaves your Mac only when you click it.
Line breaks stay where they were on screen. Words split across two lines can be joined back together. Quotes, dashes and accents come through as they are, and code keeps its indentation.
Split words are joined
Quotes and dashes are kept
Code keeps its indentation
Your last 50 captures are kept as text on your Mac, never as images. Search them, copy one again, look a word up or search the web for it, or turn history off.
No captures match your search.
Try it: type “invoice” or “git”.
Choose Read QR / Barcode from the menu bar, or give it its own shortcut, and drag over the code. What’s inside is copied. If it’s a link, open it straight from the message.
TextPluck finds the language by itself, or you choose your languages in Settings. The app itself is also translated into all 28.
* Needs a newer version of macOS. The languages come from Apple Vision, and Settings shows the ones your Mac can read. Chinese includes simplified and traditional characters.
TextPluck has no internet access at all. Apple Vision reads the text on your Mac, and the picture of your selection is gone the moment the text is ready. Your text leaves your Mac only if you click Search the web.
What we are working on next. Updates are free.
TextPluck is coming to the Mac App Store, with automatic updates. Until then, download it here.
Capture a table and paste it into Numbers or Excel with its rows and columns.
Keep a capture in a small floating window while you work.
One shortcut to read the last area again, for slides or videos that change.
Click a single word to copy only that word.
Right-click the menu bar icon to start a capture straight away.
Open an image or PDF file, or drop it on the menu bar icon, and get its text.
A “Pluck text from image” action for the Shortcuts app, AppleScript and Finder Quick Actions.
Collect several captures, one after the other, and paste them all at once.
Read Chinese, Japanese and Korean text written top to bottom.
Turn a scanned document into a PDF whose text you can search and select.
Translate an area of the screen as it changes, like subtitles or slides.
Press ⌃⇧T (Control, Shift, T), or click the TextPluck icon in the menu bar and choose Capture Text. Drag a box over the text. Press Esc to cancel. You can change the shortcut in Settings.
macOS asks for it before any app can read what is on your screen. TextPluck only looks at the box you draw, only when you draw it, and never saves the picture. The first-launch window takes you to the right place in System Settings and tells you when it is done.
28 languages, from English and Chinese to Arabic and Hindi: see the full list. Some need a newer version of macOS, and Settings shows the ones your Mac can read. The app’s own menus and windows are translated into the same 28 languages.
Yes, on macOS 15 Sequoia or later. Press Edit, then Translate. TextPluck uses Apple Translation, which runs on your Mac: macOS downloads each language the first time, then it works offline. The button shows only for languages Apple Translation supports.
Only when you click it. TextPluck opens the search in your browser, and your browser sends it to the search engine you picked in Settings: Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing or Ecosia. TextPluck itself never connects to the internet.
Yes. If you can see it on screen, you can capture it: paused videos, scanned PDFs, photos, slides, screen shares, remote desktop windows and app buttons. For video, pause on a sharp frame first.
Yes. The capture overlay covers every screen, so you can draw your box on whichever one you are looking at.
On newer versions of macOS, menu bar icons can be hidden. Open System Settings › Menu Bar and allow TextPluck. The shortcut works even while the icon is hidden.
A Mac with macOS 14 Sonoma or later, with Apple silicon or an Intel processor.