Copy text from a screenshot, PDF image, or video frame where normal text selection is impossible.
Set up a persistent Grab Frame over a dashboard or terminal window and pull out updates with one click.
Extract part numbers, URLs, or email addresses from images in bulk using the command-line interface.
Store frequently typed strings, email addresses, codes, boilerplate, for instant paste with a hotkey.
Install from Microsoft Store or GitHub releases, no external dependencies or API keys required.
Text Grab is a Windows application that copies text from anywhere on your screen, including places where text is normally impossible to select. Photos, video frames, locked application windows, and other image-based content all become selectable with a few keystrokes. The recognition happens locally on your computer using a built-in Windows feature, which means no data is sent to the cloud and no background service needs to run constantly. The app has four main modes. Full-Screen mode lets you draw a box around any region of the screen and copies whatever text is inside it. A single click in this mode attempts to grab just the word under your cursor. Grab Frame mode places a resizable transparent window over content that you want to monitor or copy from repeatedly, with a Grab button to pull the text out whenever you need it. The third mode, Edit Text Window, is a plain-text editor where you can clean up whatever you copied. It strips formatting, removes duplicate lines, converts letter casing, trims extra spaces, extracts patterns, and converts data into tables, among other options. The fourth mode, Quick Simple Lookup, works as a personal shortcut dictionary: store URLs, email addresses, part numbers, or any other strings you type frequently, then pull them up instantly with a hotkey and paste them anywhere. There is also a command-line interface that lets you launch any of the modes directly or point the app at an image file or folder to extract text in bulk. Text Grab was the original basis for the Text Extractor tool inside Microsoft PowerToys, which is a Microsoft-supported set of productivity utilities for Windows. The two tools share the same underlying approach but are developed separately. Installation is available through the Microsoft Store or direct download from the GitHub releases page. Building from source requires Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code with a few free extensions installed.
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