Copy text from a screen share
in Zoom, Meet or Teams.

A shared screen in a video call isn’t a document. Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams all send it to you as video, so there’s nothing to select: the URL in the presenter’s browser is just pixels on yours. You have three options, and the first one is the simplest.

1. Ask for it in the chat

Genuinely the best option when it works. “Could you paste that link in the chat?” gets you the exact text, with no chance of a typo. The catch is timing: by the time the presenter finds the chat, they’ve moved on, and asking for every value breaks the flow of the meeting. For anything else, read it off the screen.

2. Make the shared screen as large as you can

Whichever method you use next, a bigger, sharper share gives far better results:

• Go full screen, or hide the strip of participant videos so the share takes up most of your window.
• Ask the presenter to zoom in. Small text on a 4K screen arrives tiny and compressed on yours.
• Wait a beat. Video calls drop quality when things move. Give the frame a second to sharpen after the presenter scrolls.

3a. The free way: screenshot, then Live Text

1. Press ⌃ ⇧ ⌘ 4 and drag over the text in the shared screen. Control sends the screenshot to the clipboard.
2. In Preview, choose File → New from Clipboard.
3. Select the text, Control-click it and choose Copy Text. If you can’t select it, turn on Tools → Text Selection.

It works, but juggling Preview mid-meeting means you stop listening for a minute.

3b. The one-shortcut way: Snatch

Snatch reads text straight from your screen, so it works the same in Zoom, Google Meet in a browser tab, Teams, Webex or anything else that shows you someone’s screen.

1. While the text is on the share, press ⌘ ⇧ 2.
2. Drag over the link, value or message.
3. Let go. It’s on your clipboard, so paste it into your browser, terminal or notes.

This is one of the six everyday cases shown in the scenes on the home page.

Using it during a meeting

• Capture now, paste later. Every capture goes into Snatch’s searchable history, so you can grab the staging URL, the ticket number and the deploy command as they go by, then use them after the call.
• Links are spotted for you. When what you grab is a URL, Snatch files it under Links in the history, one click from your browser.
• QR codes work too. If someone shares a slide with a QR code, Snatch decodes it on your Mac, so there’s no reaching for your phone mid-call.
• Recordings are the same. Watching a recorded meeting later? Pause it and capture the frame in exactly the same way.

Privacy, and a little etiquette

Meetings are full of things that shouldn’t leave the company. Snatch recognises text on your Mac with Apple’s Vision framework, so nothing you capture is uploaded. macOS asks for Screen Recording permission because Snatch reads pixels on your screen, but it doesn’t record your meeting: it reads only the area you drag over, at the moment you let go.

The usual rules still apply. Copy what you’d be fine writing down in your own notes, and check before you pass anything on.

Which should you use?

If the presenter is happy to paste into chat, do that. If you’re on calls all day and keep squinting at shared screens, a single shortcut that goes straight to your clipboard is worth having. Snatch is a one-time $5.99 for macOS Sonoma and later, with a 14-day money-back guarantee.