OCR in screenshots

Robduarte

One thing that I have really been missing on my phone is the ability to select text from a screenshot. There are so many places where text isn't selectable to copy to the clipboard and the ability to do that from a screenshot is really useful. I turned off a bunch of AI stuff in PixelOS and I lost that ability. I'm wondering if anyone knows of some way that this can happen in GrapheneOS - maybe from a separate app? Having it done locally is ideal obv but honestly I would be okay with it being done via an online service - I'd just have to remember to not use it with anything sensitive.

Thanks
Rob

Dumdum

Robduarte
Try https://github.com/Akylas/OSS-DocumentScanner

rb411

Robduarte Ente Photos is a great photo management and photo backup service in general if you're interested in that and it does have text recognition built in, with all AI processing being done on device. Not sure how the functionality holds up against OSS Document Scanner that others are recommending, but Ente has been more than good enough for me.

DeletedUser765

Robduarte I've had good luck with fairscan and make a copy personally. Fully offline, both use tesseract I think.

Murcielago

Dumdum

+1 for OSS DocumentScanner.

After downloading the languages you need, the tool also works completely offline. Recognizing and extracting text works well, at least for the languages I use.

becomeparmesan

I find OCR https://github.com/SubhamTyagi/android-ocr a bit more lightweight and easier to use than OSS DocumentScanner

Arguable9798

Frankly, any apps mentioned here are either slow or unreliable for me.

There is a very good workarounds though (if you are willing to use Google Lens)

The app https://github.com/AKS-Labs/CircleToSearch has an accesibilty hook.

Meaning you can:

Download it
Remove network permission
Enable it as an accesibilty service
Go into settings and select search method "Google Lens"
Double click the status bar to trigger then select the section of the screen to OCR and then it'll redirect into Google lens immediately.

Speed is comparable to native Circle to search.

moses

I had the exact same issue and wasn’t happy with the available alternatives.

I also didn’t want to go back to Circle to Search, because my whole reason for switching to GrapheneOS was to get away from Google. So I built a very lightweight and simple app that lets you extract text from screenshots easily.

The flow is simple:

Take a screenshot.
Tap the screenshot preview in the bottom-left corner.
Open it with EasyOCR.
Set EasyOCR as the default app for this action if you want.
In EasyOCR, you can instantly extract text by long-pressing and selecting the text you need.

The app doesn’t ask for any permissions, runs the OCR completely offline, doesn’t send anything to the cloud, and is open source: Download EasyOCR from GitHub

I also added a few extra features, like cropping and drawing on screenshots.

Carrousel7956

moses very cool. I'll try it out. Consider submitting to Accrescent if possible. Not sure if they're accepting now, but eventually.

fid03

moses I know you wanting to advertise your app, but posting the same text in three different threads about the same topic seems a bit excessive.

BurningMoreThanWords

moses Why mention GrapheneOS Manual Test Checklist

Disable network access for the app in system settings if desired; OCR should still work.

If Privacy

does not request INTERNET

BurningMoreThanWords

moses The app doesn’t ask for any permissions

Attempting a download resulted in it asking for internet.

BurningMoreThanWords

Image Toolbox also has OCR capabilities but it needs to download them after install unfortunately.
Refra the gallery GOS is currently moving to (be patient) also has it planned to add OCR.

Carrousel7956 Not sure if they're accepting now

They are not accepting apps, but their hope is for later this year. They're mainly working on backend and dev tools as far as I know to make it a smoother experience. I'm honestly pretty excited for if we're able to get there since there seems to be a good amount waiting to get on Accrescent. More apps should hopefully bring in more donations as well.

Carrousel7956

fid03 they will get banned or all posts moderated so it's definitely counter productive.

Carrousel7956

BurningMoreThanWords Image Toolbox also has OCR capabilities

That's what I use but it's honestly pretty bad. I've never used something that works as well as a few different desktop OCR tools.

I've noticed that they all have to take screenshots so I guess it's a permission problem.

BurningMoreThanWords

Carrousel7956 That's what I use but it's honestly pretty bad

Yeah, honestly I haven't used it much but it wasn't the best when I did.

koocmit

Carrousel7956

BurningMoreThanWords

if You are looking for image based OCR, Offline translator does it pretty well, with the addition of automatic on screen translation, file and text translation, etc.

I have set it up my assistant so I can OCR and translate with a swipe, but it also has notification shade toggle, persistent notification, and sharing the image/text/file as options. Works offline after downloading language packs, and developer is very active at feature building.

Carrousel7956

BurningMoreThanWords it seems the app and the posts advertising it might be AI generated

BurningMoreThanWords

Carrousel7956 Yeah... I was getting a feeling the posts and app could be ai generated, but I didn't want to say anything until I was more sure of it.

Novaliss

I might be the only fan of the app from @moses , but it performs what it says it would, a rather neat and handy thing.

I did ask about network being needed;
https://github.com/MosesEllermann/EasyOCR/issues/1

Carrousel7956

Novaliss I'm not against it, I haven't even tried it. I'm against the behavior of the guy promoting it on the forum.