We have all been in a situation where we need to extract information from a locked PDF document, a screenshot sent by a client, or a slide on a paused YouTube lecture. Because you can’t click and highlight text inside an image, you are forced to do things the old-fashioned way: open a document side-by-side and manually type out the text character-by-character.
It is a tedious, time-wasting process. Fortunately, Microsoft created a free utility tool that solves this problem system-wide with a single keyboard shortcut.
The solution: Windows PowerToys “Text Extractor”
To get this feature, you need to download Windows PowerToys either from the official Microsoft Store or directly from GitHub. It is a completely free suite of power-user utilities developed by Microsoft itself.
Once PowerToys is running in the background, follow these steps:
- Bring up the image, video, or document containing the text you want to copy onto your monitor.
- Press Win + Shift + T on your keyboard.
- Your screen will slightly dim, and your cursor will turn into a crosshair selector.
- Left-click and drag a box directly over the text inside the image.
- Release the mouse.
The tool uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to instantly analyze the pixels, extract the words, and save them directly to your system clipboard. You can now open Word, Notepad, or an email draft and hit Ctrl + V to paste the text flawlessly.