Enable PowerToys Text Extractor in Windows 11

This article explains how to turn PowerToys’ Text Extractor utility on or off in Windows 11.

Microsoft PowerToys is a set of free tools and utilities for power users to help them customize and optimize their Windows experience. It includes features such as a color picker, a keyboard manager, a window manager, and more.

A recent feature introduced with PowerToys is a Text Extractor utility that allows users to copy text from anywhere on their screen, including inside images or videos.

When you turn the Text Extractor feature on, users can press the keyboard shortcut (default: Win+Shift+T), and they will see an overlay on the screen.

Click and hold your primary mouse button and drag to activate your capture. The text will be saved to your clipboard.

People might want to use PowerToys’ Text Extractor to extract text from their screen for multiple reasons. One common use case is when you come across a piece of text in an image or video that you want to copy and paste somewhere else. Instead of typing the text out manually, you can use Text Extractor to extract and copy the text to your clipboard easily.

This is particularly useful for tasks such as transcribing text from images, capturing text from online tutorials or video reviews, or extracting text from memes or social media posts.

Turn PowerToys’ Text Extractor On or Off

As mentioned, a text extractor utility recently released with the Microsoft PowerToys tool allows users to extract or copy text from anywhere on their screen, including inside images or videos.

Here’s how to turn it on or off.

First, install the PowerToys on Windows.

Once PowerToys is installed, please open it and select Text Extractor on the left menu.

On the right, select the Enable Text Extrator tile, then toggle the switch to the On position.

To turn it off, toggle the button back to the Off position.

Text Extractor can only recognize languages that have the OCR language pack installed.

Use the PowerShell command below to determine whether your system supports OCR and the languages supported.

# Please use Windows PowerShell, not PowerShell 7 as these aren't .NET Core libraries

[Windows.Media.Ocr.OcrEngine, Windows.Foundation, ContentType = WindowsRuntime]

[Windows.Media.Ocr.OcrEngine]::AvailableRecognizerLanguages

To use the Text Extractor feature, press the keyboard shortcut Windows key + SHIFT + T. You’ll see an overlay on the screen.

Click and hold your primary mouse button and drag to activate your capture. The text will be saved to your clipboard.

Capture mode is deactivated immediately after text in the selected region is recognized and copied to the clipboard. You can exit capture mode by pressing Esc at any moment.

The default language will be based on your Windows system language > keyboard settings (OCR language packs are available for installation).

That should do it!

Reference:

Microsoft PowerToys

Conclusion:

• The Text Extractor feature in PowerToys is a useful utility for extracting text from images or videos on your screen.
• Following the steps outlined in this article, you can easily turn the Text Extractor feature on or off in Windows 11.
• This capability can be particularly beneficial for tasks such as transcribing text from images, capturing text from online tutorials or video reviews, and extracting text from memes or social media posts.