OCR - Image Reader
A powerful optical character recognition (OCR) extension to capture and convert images to text
What is OCR - Image Reader?
Stats
Chrome-Stats Rank
Summary
Usage Preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnpgZPnn9bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGclbl03Uuk
This extension adds a toolbar button to your browser which when clicks allows the user to select a region in the currently active window. The extension captures the area and tries to recognize text inside this region using the internal powerful OCR engine. This extension uses the "tesseract.js" library that supports more than 100 languages, automatic text orientation, and script detection.
This extension loads the JS library on the page and removes it when you are done with the OCR. This way there is no long-term resource usage.
Note: On the first run, the extension might take a few minutes to fetch the training data from the internet. Since this resource is cached, all subsequent calls are going to be fast.
Note: Optical character recognition (OCR) is slow, so this extension displays a progress bar for each detection module.
Note: This extension does the OCR process offline. There is no server-side interaction. It only fetches the language training database once.
Note: This tool can be used to extract the text content out of images, PDF documents, Powerpoint slides, or extract the content of a web page when user-section is forbidden.
User reviews
User reviews summary
Pros
- Works well with multiple languages
- Does not require signing in, creating an account, or recurring fees
- Simple and efficient
- Works out of the box
- The Chrome version is well-received for handling special characters
Cons
- Error message regarding 'missing host permission for the tab'
- Inaccuracy in translations, especially for Chinese
- Lack of support for Turkish characters
- Gets stuck on 'downloading resources' without functioning
Most mentioned
- Multi-language support
- Ease of use without the need for an account or fees
- Accuracy of the OCR and translation features
- Technical issues such as errors and being stuck on resource downloading
- Comparison of performance with the Chrome version
Recent reviews
Safety
Risk impact
OCR - Image Reader may not be safe to use and it requires some risky permissions. Exercise caution when installing this add-on. Review carefully before installing.
Risk likelihood
OCR - Image Reader is probably trust-worthy. Prefer other publishers if available. Exercise caution when installing this add-on.