Live Text is Apple’s built-in text recognition. On a Mac, it lets you select the words in a photo or image as if they were typed, then copy them, look them up, translate them, or act on a phone number or link. Snatch is a paid menu bar app that does one part of that, getting text onto your clipboard, but from anywhere on screen.
They overlap more than they compete, so the useful question is which situations each one handles.
How Live Text works on a Mac
Apple documents Live Text in three places on macOS:
- Photos: open a photo, put the pointer over the text, Control-click and choose Copy Text. You can also look it up, translate it, search the web, share it, or call, message and email what it finds.
- Preview: open an image, drag to select the text, Control-click and choose Copy Text. If nothing selects, turn on Tools → Text Selection.
- Safari: select text inside a picture on a web page and copy, translate or look it up, or open an address in Maps.
It’s free, it’s already on your Mac, and for an image you already have open it’s hard to beat. Apple notes that Live Text isn’t available in every region or language.
Side by side
| Feature | Live Text | Snatch |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Included with macOS | One-time, from $5.99 |
| Where it works | Photos and images in apps that support it. Apple documents Photos, Preview and Safari. | Anything on screen, in any app, plus copied images and PNG, JPEG or PDF files |
| Video, calls and screen shares | Not covered by Apple’s Live Text guides for Mac | Yes, it reads the pixels on screen |
| How you start | Hover over text in an image, select it, Control-click | Press ⌘⇧2 anywhere, then drag |
| Getting it on the clipboard | Choose Copy Text | Automatic when you let go |
| Look up, translate, share | Yes | No |
| Phone numbers, emails, links | Call, email or open them from the menu | Detects links; QR links can open automatically |
| Capture history | Not part of Live Text | Searchable, with Text, Links and QR filters |
| Languages | Varies by region and language | Any language Apple Vision supports, with auto-detect |
| macOS | Built in (Apple’s guides cover Monterey 12 and later) | macOS Sonoma 14 or later |
When Live Text is all you need
- The text is in a photo in your library or an image file you can open in Preview.
- It’s an image on a web page in Safari.
- You want to translate or look up the text rather than paste it somewhere.
- You do this a few times a month.
In those cases, save your money. Live Text does the job.
When a screen OCR shortcut helps
- The text isn’t in a supported app. A paused YouTube video, a Zoom or Teams screen share, a design file, a chat app, an error dialog. Snatch reads whatever pixels are on screen, so the app doesn’t matter.
- You do it all day. One shortcut and a drag, and the text is already on the clipboard. No opening the image, no context menu.
- You want to come back to it. Snatch keeps a searchable history of everything you capture, so you can grab several things now and paste them later.
- The image is already copied, or it’s a PDF. Snatch reads images straight from the clipboard, and opens PNG, JPEG and PDF files.
- You automate. A URL scheme lets Raycast, Alfred or Shortcuts start a capture.
What about privacy?
Live Text is part of macOS itself. Snatch uses Apple’s Vision framework to recognise text on your Mac, so captures never leave it and recognition works with Wi-Fi off. There’s no account and nothing to upload.
The short version
Start with Live Text. If you keep running into text it can’t reach, or you’re copying text off your screen several times a day, that’s the gap Snatch fills. It’s a one-time $5.99 for macOS Sonoma and later, with a 14-day money-back guarantee if it turns out you didn’t need it.