CopyBuffer

How to search for text inside screenshots on a Mac

Updated

What macOS does on its own

  • Live Text. Open an image in Preview, Photos, Quick Look or Safari and you can select the text in it like normal text, then copy it.
  • Spotlight and Photos. Images saved as files or in your Photos library can be found by the words in them, because macOS reads image text in the background.
  • Screenshots to the clipboard aren't saved. ⇧⌘4 saves a file to the Desktop. Add ⌃ (⌃⇧⌘4) and the screenshot goes only to the clipboard: handy for pasting into a chat, but the next copy replaces it and nothing is left to search.

So the screenshots developers take most, a quick ⌃⇧⌘4 of an error or a log to paste into an issue, are exactly the ones you can't find again.

Find any copied image with CopyBuffer

  1. Take a screenshot with ⌃⇧⌘4, or copy any image, for example from a browser or a design tool.
  2. CopyBuffer saves it, encrypted, and reads the text in it with Apple Vision on your Mac. Korean, English, Japanese and Chinese text is read, and so are QR codes and barcodes.
  3. Later, press ⌘⇧V and type a word you remember from the image, such as 429 or rate limit. The screenshot shows up in the list like any text you copied.
  4. Press ↩ to paste the image, or ⌘O to open it, for example in Preview to copy the text with Live Text.

⌥3 jumps to the Images tab. Several search words must all match, so stripe 402 narrows things down fast.

Turning it off

Text recognition can be switched off in Settings ▸ General with Recognize text in images. Images are still saved, just not searchable by their text.

Privacy

  • Recognition runs on your Mac with Apple Vision. Images are never uploaded.
  • Images and their previews are stored encrypted with AES-256-GCM in ~/Library/Application Support/CopyBuffer/, with a key wrapped by the Secure Enclave.
  • Apps you exclude (password managers by default) aren't recorded at all, images included.

Limits

  • Handwriting, very small or blurry text, and text in other languages may not be found.
  • Only images copied while CopyBuffer is running are searchable. It doesn't index screenshot files already on your disk; Spotlight does that.
  • Images count toward a storage limit (about 1 GB by default, Image storage limit in Settings ▸ General).

FAQ

Are my screenshots sent to a server for text recognition?

No. CopyBuffer uses Apple Vision on your Mac, and there is no server. Images are stored encrypted on your Mac only.

Which languages can it read in images?

Korean, English, Japanese and Chinese, plus the contents of QR codes and barcodes.

Can I copy the text out of a screenshot?

Open the image from CopyBuffer with ⌘O and use Live Text in Preview: select the text and copy it.