How to Search for Text Inside Images on a Mac

Half the information you deal with arrives as pictures: a screenshot of a bug report, a photo of a whiteboard, a chart in a slide deck, a receipt, a QR-code poster with the Wi-Fi password printed underneath. The words are right there, and you can't search for them, or so it seems.

Your Mac can read those words. The trick is knowing where it searches them, and where it doesn't.

How Macs read text in images

Since macOS Monterey, Macs recognise text in images on the device, a feature Apple calls Live Text. Two things are built on it:

• Selecting text: hover over the words in an image in Preview, Photos, Quick Look or Safari and drag to select them (see how to copy text from an image).
• Searching text: Spotlight and Photos index the recognised words, so you can find an image by what it says.

Text recognition of this kind is called OCR (optical character recognition). Apple's version runs on your Mac, so your images aren't uploaded to be read.

Search photos by text in the Photos app

1. Open Photos and click the search field in the toolbar.
2. Type a word that appears in the photo, such as a shop name or "receipt".
3. Photos lists matching photos, including ones where the word only appears in the image.

This is the best built-in option for anything in your Photos library, including iPhone screenshots synced through iCloud Photos.

Search image files with Spotlight and Finder

For images saved as files (screenshots, downloads, exports), use Spotlight or Finder:

• Spotlight: press ⌘ Space and type the word. Images whose recognised text matches can appear in the results.
• Finder: press ⌘ F, choose This Mac, type the word, choose Contents, then add a Kind is Image filter.

The catches: image analysis runs in the background, so new files take a while to become searchable; images embedded in PDFs aren't analysed the same way; and results can include images where macOS recognised an object matching your word rather than text.

The gap: images that were never files

Most images you handle in a day are never saved. You copy a chart from a web page, a screenshot from a chat, a mockup from Figma, a frame from a video call, or you take a screenshot straight to the clipboard with ⌃ ⇧ ⌘ 4. You paste it once, and then it's gone. Spotlight never saw it, so there's nothing to search.

That's the gap a clipboard manager with OCR fills. It keeps every image you copy, reads the text in it, and lets you search it with everything else you've copied.

Search every copied image and screenshot with EasyPaste

EasyPaste keeps your clipboard history, up to 2,000 clips, including images and screenshots, and runs Apple's Vision text recognition on each one, on your Mac, as soon as it arrives. In practice:

1. Copy an image from anywhere, or take a screenshot into the folder EasyPaste watches.
2. Later, press ⌃ ⌘ V and type a few words you remember from it.
3. The image comes up, shown as a picture rather than a file name. Press Return to copy it back and paste it wherever you need it.

Search matches every word you type, in any order, so a phrase that wraps over two lines in the image still matches. It ignores case and accents, and it searches the name of the app you copied from too, so "figma button" finds the button you copied from Figma. On a MacBook with a notch, the same search is in the shelf that opens when you hover over the notch.

Other clipboard managers do this too: Maccy, which is free, also reads text in images you copy. EasyPaste adds the automatic screenshot collection, a visual history, and filters by type, app and your own categories.

Which method to use

Tips for text that's actually findable

• Capture big. Zoom in before a screenshot; small or blurry text is recognised far less reliably.
• Search distinctive words. An order number, a surname or an unusual term beats "the" or "total".
• Use fewer words. If a three-word search finds nothing, try one; recognition sometimes misreads a single character.
• Watch similar characters. 0 and O, 1 and l, rn and m are the usual mix-ups. Check codes before you use them.

Want the whole workflow? Use screenshots as a second brain, or compare screenshot search apps for Mac.

Frequently asked questions

Can a Mac search for text in pictures?

Yes. Live Text recognises text in images on the Mac, and Photos, Spotlight and Finder can search it. It covers images in your Photos library and saved image files, not images you only copied.

What is OCR search?

OCR (optical character recognition) turns the text in an image into searchable characters. OCR search means you can type a word and find the images that contain it, even though the image itself has no text layer.

Is there a clipboard manager that can search text in images?

Yes. EasyPaste and Maccy both read the text in images you copy so you can search for it. EasyPaste also collects screenshots from your screenshot folder automatically and makes them searchable without you copying them.

Does image text search work offline?

Apple's Live Text and EasyPaste both recognise text on your Mac, so they work without an internet connection and don't upload your images.