How to Use OCR - ShareX Tutorial

Overview

ShareX includes a built-in OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine that can extract text from any image or screen region. This is incredibly useful for copying text from error dialogs, PDFs, images, or anywhere text can't be selected normally.

How to Use OCR

Method 1: Quick OCR from Tray

1. Right-click the ShareX tray icon
2. Go to Capture > OCR
3. Select the region containing text
4. ShareX automatically extracts the text and copies it to your clipboard
5. Paste (Ctrl + V) wherever you need

Method 2: OCR from an Existing Image

1. Open ShareX main window
2. Click Tools > OCR
3. Select an image file from your computer
4. The extracted text appears in a popup window
5. Copy the text or save it to a file

Method 3: OCR from Screenshot

1. Take a screenshot as usual
2. In the task settings, add "OCR" as an after-capture task
3. Text will be automatically extracted after each screenshot

Supported Languages

ShareX's OCR supports multiple languages. To change the language:

1. Go to Task Settings > OCR
2. Select your preferred language from the dropdown
3. English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and many European languages are supported

Tips for Better OCR Results

• Ensure the text area has good contrast against the background
• Capture at the highest resolution possible
• Avoid skewed or rotated text
• Clean, sans-serif fonts produce the best results
• For scanned documents, use the region capture to select only the text area

Use Cases

• Copying error messages for troubleshooting
• Extracting text from images and screenshots
• Digitizing printed documents
• Copying text from presentation slides
• Grabbing code from tutorial videos