How to search text in screenshots on Mac

Screenshots are how many of us remember things on a Mac: a confirmation page, a chart, a message, a setting we will need again. The trouble starts when you need one of them back.

Copy the text out of a screenshot

If you already know which screenshot it is, macOS can read it for you with Live Text:

1. Open the screenshot in Preview (double-click it, usually).
2. Move the pointer over the text — it turns into a text cursor.
3. Select the text as in any document and press ⌘C.

The same works in Photos and on images in Safari. You can also Control-click selected text to look it up or translate it, and click a phone number, address or date to act on it.

Find a screenshot by what it says

This is harder. macOS can recognise text in images in the background and add it to Spotlight’s index, so typing a word from a screenshot into Spotlight (⌘Space) may find it. Three caveats, from independent testing by The Eclectic Light Company:

• it can happen long after the screenshot was taken;
• results were inconsistent between Macs;
• images inside PDFs aren’t analysed.

To give it the best chance:

• Keep screenshots in one folder (press ⇧⌘5 › Options › Save to).
• Make sure that folder isn’t listed in System Settings › Spotlight’s privacy exclusions.
• Search from inside that folder in Finder: Finder searches the contents Spotlight has indexed, not just file names.

Find it by when you took it

If you remember roughly when, the date is often faster than the words. In Finder, open your screenshots folder, switch to List view (⌘2) and sort by Date Created. Screenshot names also contain the date and time.

Name the important ones

For anything you will need again — a licence key, a booking — rename the screenshot right away, or drop it into a note with a few words. Thirty seconds now saves ten minutes later.

Or skip the screenshot entirely

Screenshots are a workaround: we take them because we are afraid of forgetting. A screen memory does it for you, without the clutter. It keeps a light, compressed memory of what was on screen, reads its text as you go, and lets you type a word to land on the moment, the word highlighted.

DejaVu does this on your Mac, with Apple’s own text recognition, keeping a frame only when your screen changes. You can copy text straight out of any moment, just as with Live Text. Nothing leaves your Mac, and your memory opens with Touch ID.

It won’t read the screenshots already on your Desktop — it starts from the day you install it. From then on, you may find you take far fewer.