Snappy, secure, on-device OCR for MacOS

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OwlOCR 4.0 - Near instant text recognition for Mac!

Big Weather

•5yr ago

This handy little utility lets you use text recognition to instantly capture anything on the Mac screen. Digitizes your scans and files to create searchable PDFs. Everything is done on your Mac to ensure full privacy and performance.

Most features are free!

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Big Weather

Maker

Hi Product Hunters, 👋 It's my great pleasure to come back after 8 months to show you the reimagined OwlOCR for the Mac! 💡I've always wanted to build things and even become an entrepreneur and during the first pandemic lockdown I built the initial version of OwlOCR that launched earlier this year. The core problem I wanted to solve is: "there’s text on the screen you want to copy, but it cannot be copied." This happens more often than one might realize (think videos, zoom slides, scanned documents or any app where the text is not selectable). ✏️ This app lets you simply select an area on your screen and any text in that area is machine read and copied to your clipboard. 🔒 All of this happens pretty much instantaneously, on-device, so it’s fast enough even for short text snippets and completely private for any business purpose! Further than that this app offers the possibility to work directly with PDF and image files to run batch text recognition on them and export them to searchable PDF versions. ⭐️ Since the start of the year OwlOCR has gathered the love of almost 2,000 monthly active users who have rated it on average at 4.7 out of 5 stars. Can't wait to hear your feedback and I'll be here to reply to any comments!

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5yr ago

Pluckd

@frankbyte When are we Windows users getting some ❤ ? :)

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5yr ago

Nhost

@frankbyte @mrcordeiro When you switch to Mac! 😅

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5yr ago

Big Weather

Maker

@frankbyte @mrcordeiro Everything about this is so native to MacOS that there is pretty much exactly zero transferrable code here for Windows.. The concept however should work in Windows just as well! The important part is that the tech stack needs to be fast enough for near instantaneous results. I think it's a great idea to work on something like this for Windows!

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5yr ago

Big Weather

Maker

@frankbyte @mrcordeiro @johan_eliasson Facts  (Seriously though I hope we get something this on Windows as well, I do use that occasionally as well and miss it there!)

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5yr ago

Pluckd

@frankbyte @johan_eliasson I can't afford one (or rather, one that's better than my current Levono) 😭

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5yr ago

Software Product Management Stack

Cool! :) Could you explain this sentence that I found on your website: "The text recognition algorithm that is used has been developed by Apple and is a part of your MacOS operating system and is only run on your device." @frankbyte

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5yr ago

Big Weather

Maker

@frankbyte @nicolasegosum Thanks! Seems like the sentence structure is a bit backwards on that one. There's two things there: 1) the text recognition happens on your device (Mac), meaning that none of your screenshots or files are sent to online to any third party service. 2) the text recognition engine that is used has been developer by Apple and is included as part of the MacOS operating system. This is basically the reason why Big Sur has more language support compared to Catalina.

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5yr ago

Software Product Management Stack

@frankbyte @nicolasegosum Ok thanks, makes more sense like this. I thought your program give a UI to a feature already existing on MacOS. :)

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5yr ago

Zapier

Absolutely love it! I had a couple of OCR tools, but this one beats it. Def appreciate the non-subscription module, which was an instant buy for me (even though I prob don't need the pro features). Common everyone, buy this!

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5yr ago

Big Weather

Maker

@leo_at_zapier Thank you, thank you Lionel! The Pro IAP is also for supporting development so much appreciated!

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5yr ago

MacPaw

Wow! Looks very useful. Great job! I can't wait when I try it 🖤 Congratulations!

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5yr ago

Big Weather

Maker

@peteliev Thank you! I def hope you find it useful, I've personally come to rely on it! Be in touch if you miss any features that would fit in nicely!

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5yr ago