This script captures a screenshot, performs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the image to extract text, copies the extracted text to the clipboard, and removes the screenshot afterward.
- Pop!_OS 24.04 with Cosmic Desktop Environment
- Tesseract OCR for text extraction
- wl-clipboard for copying text to the clipboard in Wayland environments
To install Tesseract OCR and wl-clipboard, open a terminal and run:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr wl-clipboard-
Copy the
ocr.shscript to a directory, e.g., your home directory (/home/your_user_name/). -
Make the script executable by running the following command:
chmod +x ~/ocr.sh
To quickly run the script with the Super+Shift+T shortcut:
-
Open Settings in Cosmic Desktop.
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Go to Input Devices -> Keyboard settings.
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Scroll down and select Add Custom Shortcut.
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Name the shortcut, e.g., "OCR Screenshot".
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In the Command field, enter the full path to the script:
/home/your_user_name/ocr.sh
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Click Add Shortcut and type(do not press) Super + Shift + T as your key combination and click Add keybinding .
Press Super + Shift + T to:
- Take a screenshot.
- Extract text from the screenshot.
- Copy the text to your clipboard.
Various parameters can be added to tesseract to improve OCR
Modify the line number 15, according to your need. Here's the updated README table with multilingual examples included, as well as instructions for modifying the script.
This table lists the installation commands and required modifications to add or customize language support in ocr.sh for OCR text extraction.
| Language(s) | Tesseract Language Code(s) | Installation Command(s) | Line 15 Modification Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | eng |
Installed by default with Tesseract | text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l eng 2>/dev/null) |
| Hindi | hin |
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr-hin |
text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l hin 2>/dev/null) |
| Spanish | spa |
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr-spa |
text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l spa 2>/dev/null) |
| French | fra |
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr-fra |
text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l fra 2>/dev/null) |
| German | deu |
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr-deu |
text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l deu 2>/dev/null) |
| Japanese | jpn |
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr-jpn |
text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l jpn 2>/dev/null) |
| Chinese (Simplified) | chi_sim |
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr-chi-sim |
text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l chi_sim 2>/dev/null) |
| Chinese (Traditional) | chi_tra |
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr-chi-tra |
text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l chi_tra 2>/dev/null) |
| Russian | rus |
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr-rus |
text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l rus 2>/dev/null) |
| Arabic | ara |
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr-ara |
text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l ara 2>/dev/null) |
| English + Hindi | eng+hin |
Install both English and Hindi | text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l eng+hin 2>/dev/null) |
| English + Spanish | eng+spa |
Install both English and Spanish | text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l eng+spa 2>/dev/null) |
| Multilingual (e.g., English + Hindi + Spanish) | eng+hin+spa |
Install all required language packages | text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l eng+hin+spa 2>/dev/null) |
To enable multiple languages, combine the language codes with a +. For example, for English, Hindi, and Spanish text recognition, use the following in line 15:
text=$(tesseract "$latest_screenshot" stdout -l eng+hin+spa 2>/dev/null)Ensure that the necessary packages for each language are installed.
After running, the script will automatically remove the latest screenshot image from the Pictures directory.
This setup allows you to instantly OCR text from any selected screen area and have it ready in the clipboard for easy pasting.