OCR stands for optical character recognition. In everyday English, it means software reads words inside an image and turns them into text you can select, copy, edit, or search.
The basics
When Windows OCR is useful.
Normal copy and paste only works when an app exposes real text. OCR helps when the words are part of a screenshot, a scanned PDF, a paused video, a game, a remote desktop, or an image on a website.
It is especially handy for error messages, serial numbers, addresses, table cells, subtitles, and small pieces of text you do not want to type again.
With Circo
Copy text in four short steps.
- Put the words you need on screen.
- Press Alt + C, or your own custom shortcut.
- Draw a box around the text.
- Choose Copy text, review the result, and copy it.
Circo uses the OCR built into Windows. It can show selectable results and keeps up to 50 recent items in local history until you clear them.
Better results
Give the words enough room.
- Select only what you need. A tighter box gives OCR less clutter to understand.
- Use a clear frame. Pause moving video and wait for subtitles or text to become sharp.
- Increase the size. Zoom the page or image when letters are tiny.
- Keep full lines together. Cutting through letters or lines makes the result less reliable.
- Check important details. Similar characters such as 0 and O, or 1 and l, can be confused.
On your PC
Circo reads text locally.
The selected image may be placed in a uniquely named temporary file while Windows reads it. Circo deletes that file when the job is finished. The image is not sent to a Circo OCR server.
If you choose translation after OCR, the extracted text is sent to the translation service. If you choose visual search, the selected crop is sent to Google Lens. These are separate actions with different boundaries, explained in the privacy policy.
Other choices
Built-in and free Windows OCR tools.
On supported versions of Windows 11, Snipping Tool includes text actions. Microsoft PowerToys has a Text Extractor shortcut for Windows 10 and 11. OneNote can also copy text from pictures in some versions.
Choose the tool that fits the job. Circo is designed for people who want one circle-first shortcut for OCR, visual search, and translation.