How to search text in screenshots and images on a Mac

By Sidhant Sinha, maker of FindGlance · Published October 21, 2026 · 12 min read

Screenshots are where a lot of useful text ends up: order numbers, error messages, flight details, a code from a support chat. The trouble is that a screenshot is a picture, so the words in it aren’t text your Mac can search the way it searches a document, unless something reads them first.

That reading step is called OCR. OCR (optical character recognition) is software that recognizes letters in an image and turns them into real, searchable text. macOS has OCR built in as Live Text, and several apps use the same Apple technology to make whole folders of screenshots searchable. This guide covers each route, what it can and can’t do, and how to pick one.

• Live Text lets you select and copy words from one image in Preview, Quick Look, Photos and Safari.
• Spotlight can find text in images on recent macOS, but indexing happens slowly in the background and results are inconsistent.
• The Photos app searches text in photos, but only in the Photos library, not screenshots on your Desktop.
• Scanned PDFs without a text layer can’t be searched in Preview until something runs OCR on them.
• For a reliable search across every screenshot, use a tool that runs OCR on your folders, such as Raycast or FindGlance.

Can Spotlight find text inside screenshots on a Mac?

Spotlight can sometimes find text inside screenshots on a Mac, but you can’t count on it. Apple’s Spotlight guide says that “with Live Text, Spotlight can search for text in images (available in select languages),” yet that text is added to the index slowly, in the background, and not every image gets processed.

Here is what is known about how it behaves on macOS Sonoma, Sequoia and later:

• It is slow. Text recognition for images runs after Spotlight’s normal indexing, as a separate background job. On a Mac with a lot of images, it can take days to catch up, and a fresh screenshot is often not searchable by its text right away.
• It is uneven. Independent tests and Apple Community threads report the same image text being found on one Mac and not on another, and images whose text Live Text can select in Preview still not turning up in Spotlight.
• Image-only PDFs are not covered. Spotlight indexes the text layer inside a PDF. A scanned PDF that is only pictures of pages has no text layer, so Spotlight finds it by name only.
• Language matters. Live Text, and therefore image text in Spotlight, works only in supported languages and regions.

To check what your own Mac can do, take a screenshot of some text with an unusual word in it, wait a while, then press ⌘ Space and type that word. You can run the same test in Terminal, limited to one folder:

mdfind -onlyin ~/Desktop "yourword"

If nothing comes back, Spotlight hasn’t indexed that image’s text yet, or won’t. If Spotlight also misses files by name, the problem is the index itself; the guide to fixing Spotlight when it isn’t finding files covers rebuilding it.

How do I copy text from an image on a Mac with Live Text?

Live Text is the macOS feature that lets you select, copy and act on words in a photo or screenshot as if they were typed text. It works in Preview, Quick Look, Photos and Safari, and it runs on the Mac.

Turn Live Text on

Live Text is on by default in supported languages. If you can’t select text in images anywhere, check the setting:

1. Choose Apple menu › System Settings.
2. Click General in the sidebar, then Language & Region (you may need to scroll).
3. Turn on Live Text, described as “Select text in images to copy or take action.”

In Preview

1. Open the screenshot in Preview.
2. Hold the pointer over the text until it becomes a text cursor, then drag to select the words you want.
3. Control-click the selection and choose Copy Text, or press ⌘ C.

The same menu offers Look Up, Translate and a web search. Phone numbers, email addresses and links get a small arrow you can click to call, write or open them. If dragging draws a rectangle instead of selecting words, choose Tools › Text Selection. Apple’s Preview guide to interacting with text in a photo lists every option.

In Quick Look

Select a screenshot in Finder and press Space to open it in Quick Look. Hover over the text, drag to select it, and press ⌘ C. This is the fastest way to grab one line from a screenshot without opening an app.

In Photos and Safari

In Photos, open a photo, drag across the text, then Control-click and choose Copy Text. In Safari, the same drag-and-Control-click works on images in web pages, which helps when a site posts a schedule or a menu as a picture.

Live Text is excellent for one image you already have open. It doesn’t help you find which of 400 screenshots contains the word you need.

How do I search for text in photos with the Photos app?

The Photos app on a Mac can find photos by the words inside them: press ⌘ F in Photos and type the word. Apple’s guide to searching for photos and videos on Mac says you “can also search for text within photos to quickly find receipts, documents, and more.”

The catch is scope. Photos searches the Photos library only. Screenshots you take on a Mac are saved as files on the Desktop (or wherever you set), not added to Photos, so Photos can’t see them unless you import them with File › Import. Screenshots taken on an iPhone are a different story: they land in the iPhone’s Photos library, and with iCloud Photos turned on they appear in Photos on your Mac too, where text search can reach them.

Photos also builds its search data in the background, so newly imported images may take a while to become searchable, and people in Apple Community threads report some false matches.

How do I search a scanned PDF by its text?

You can search a PDF in Preview with ⌘ F only if the PDF contains a text layer. PDFs exported from Word, Pages or a web browser have one. A scanned PDF often doesn’t: each page is just an image, so Preview’s search, Finder and Spotlight find nothing inside it.

A quick test: open the PDF in Preview and try to select a single word. If Preview selects the whole page as a block, or search finds nothing you can plainly see, the PDF is image-only. On recent macOS, Live Text may still let you select words on such a page, but that doesn’t make the file searchable.

To make a scanned PDF searchable, run OCR on it once and save the result, which adds an invisible text layer:

• A PDF editor with OCR. For example, PDF Expert can recognize the text in scanned files so you can search, select and highlight it.
• Rescan with OCR on. Many scanner apps can save a “searchable PDF” directly.
• Just need the words once? Open the PDF in Preview and copy them with Live Text, or use the Extract Text from Image action in the Shortcuts app.

Most file search tools, FindGlance included, search the text layer of a PDF, so a scanned PDF becomes searchable once one of the steps above has added that layer.

Where are screenshots saved on a Mac, and how do I change it?

By default, a Mac saves screenshots to the Desktop as PNG files. Recent macOS versions name them “Screenshot” followed by the date and time, for example Screenshot 2026-10-21 at 4.38.24 PM.png; older versions used “Screen Shot.” You can change the location in the Screenshot app’s Options menu.

To change where screenshots are saved:

1. Press ⇧ ⌘ 5.
2. Click Options in the toolbar.
3. Under Save to, choose Desktop, Documents, Clipboard, or Other Location to pick any folder.

The same menu sets a timer and turns the floating thumbnail and mouse pointer on or off. Apple’s screenshot guide covers the details. If you prefer Terminal, these commands do the same thing (create the folder first):

mkdir -p ~/Pictures/Screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures/Screenshots
killall SystemUIServer

Run defaults read com.apple.screencapture location to see the current custom location. If it prints an error, no custom location is set and screenshots go to the Desktop.

What apps can search the text in all your screenshots?

The most reliable way to find a screenshot by the text in it is an app that runs OCR on every image in your screenshot folders and keeps its own index. These apps generally use Apple’s Vision framework, the same on-device text recognition behind Live Text.

Raycast: Search Screenshots

Raycast is a Mac launcher with a built-in Search Screenshots command. According to the Raycast manual, it “indexes the contents of your screenshots with on-device OCR.” By default it watches the system screenshot location, the CleanShot X folder and ~/Desktop, and you can add folders under Search Scopes. You search recognized text with the text: filter, and a Copy Text from Image action copies what it read. A Recognition Mode setting trades speed (Fast, the default) for thoroughness (Accurate). There’s also an option to download cloud-only files so they can be read. Raycast is a good fit if you already use it as your launcher.

FindGlance

FindGlance is a Mac app for finding and tidying files that shows your images, videos, documents and other files as large thumbnails. It reads text in screenshots, photos and PDFs in the folders you allow and lets you search it in plain English. Details are in the next section.

Tools for capturing text, not searching it

Some apps focus on grabbing text from the screen rather than searching old screenshots. CleanShot X, a screenshot app, can copy “any non-selectable text” from an area you select, with recognition “performed completely on-device.” Its separate cloud service lets you find uploaded captures by their content, which means those files are stored online. For PDFs, an editor with OCR such as PDF Expert makes scanned files permanently searchable.

How do I find a screenshot by its text with FindGlance?

FindGlance finds screenshots by the words inside them: it reads the text in screenshots and photos with Apple’s Vision text recognition on your Mac, searches the text inside PDFs too, and its search matches both. We built FindGlance because the screenshot you need is usually one of hundreds with near-identical names.

1. In FindGlance Settings, choose the folders it may look at, such as Desktop, Documents, Downloads or your screenshots folder.
2. Press ⌘ F and describe what you want, for example screenshots with tracking number.
3. Check the “Understood as” chips under the search field, which show how FindGlance read your query as filters such as Kind and Date. Adjust them if needed.
4. Press Space to preview a result, or press ⇧ ⌘ C to use Copy Text and copy the recognized text from the image.

Timing, honestly: the first text scan in each launch takes 15 to 30 seconds while macOS loads its text-recognition model. After that, FindGlance reads roughly 0.1 to 0.3 seconds per image, and the results are cached on the Mac, so later searches don’t repeat the work.

Limits worth knowing. Files stored only in iCloud, not downloaded, are skipped for text recognition. FindGlance searches the folders you allow, not system files. It works alongside Finder rather than replacing it, and Show in Finder (⌥ ⌘ R) takes you to any file. Every feature, including text search and plain-English search, is included in the 7-day free trial, with no card or email. After that, FindGlance Pro is a one-time payment, not a subscription; see FindGlance pricing. FindGlance needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later.

The home screen also has a Screenshots view, and Clean Up suggests Old Screenshots you might no longer need. The guide to freeing up storage on a Mac covers that side.

Which way to search text in screenshots should you use?

Use Live Text for one image, Photos for your photo library, and an OCR search app for screenshot folders. The table sums up each method.

Is it private to search text in screenshots?

Searching screenshot text is private when the OCR runs on your Mac, because the images never leave it. Screenshots often hold sensitive details such as account numbers, addresses and messages, so this matters more than it does for most files.

• On-device: Live Text, Spotlight and Photos run recognition on the Mac. Raycast describes its screenshot OCR as on-device. FindGlance runs indexing, text recognition and search on the Mac, with no account, and never uploads files, file names or contents; it goes online only to check the license and for updates. The FindGlance privacy policy has the details.
• Cloud: Web OCR sites, online converters and cloud screenshot libraries upload the image to a server to read it. That can be fine for a public flyer, but think twice before uploading a banking or medical screenshot.

Whatever the tool, check what it says about where recognition happens before pointing it at your Desktop.

How can you make screenshots easier to find later?

Screenshots are easiest to find later when they live in one dedicated folder, are stored on the Mac rather than only in iCloud, and the ones that matter have a descriptive name.

• Give screenshots their own folder. Set ⇧⌘5 › Options › Save to to something like ~/Pictures/Screenshots. A search tool then has one place to watch, and your Desktop stays clear.
• Rename the important ones. Click the floating thumbnail to edit, or select the file in Finder and press Return to rename it. A name like passport-renewal-receipt.png is findable by every tool, including Spotlight.
• Move keepers out of the pile. Drag the screenshots you need long term into a project folder, and delete the rest regularly.
• Keep them downloaded. See the warning below.
• Prefer PNG for text. The default PNG format keeps text crisp, which helps OCR. Heavily compressed or tiny screenshots are harder to read.
• Capture text you will need again as text. If you only want the words, use Live Text right away and paste them into a note, which any search can find.

Frequently asked questions