What happens when you press Read
The screenshot is copied onto a canvas at twice its size (up to 4,000 pixels on the long edge) and read by Tesseract in a background worker in this tab. With the chat layout on, every read line is placed by the side of the frame it sits on: lines against the left edge are the other person’s, lines against the right edge are yours, and lines centred in the frame — dates, “Today”, notices from the app — are kept as they are.
Lines that sit close together on the same side are joined into one message. Times at the end of a message are dropped unless you keep them, and the chat title is left out unless you include it.
What it will not do
- It does not know who anyone is. Them and You are the two sides of the screen, nothing more.
- It does not read emoji, stickers, voice notes or pictures inside the chat.
- Group chats with several other people come out as one Them: side.
Questions people ask
Is my screenshot uploaded?
No. The text reader is downloaded from this site the first time you press Read and runs in your browser tab. A chat screenshot is exactly the kind of picture that should not go to a server, and here it has nowhere to go.
How does the chat layout work?
Messaging apps put the other person's bubbles against the left edge and yours against the right, in light and dark themes. The page reads every line, looks at which side it sits on and joins lines that sit close together on the same side into one message. It is a layout guess, and it is labelled as one: check who said what before you rely on it.
Does it read names from the chat?
Not unless you ask. The header row, where the chat title or contact name sits, is left out by default; tick “Include the chat title” to keep it. Messages come out as Them: and You:, never with a guessed name.
Why is screen text read differently from a photo?
Screen type is small and crisp. A photo is cleaned up before reading, but a screenshot is only enlarged 2× (up to 4,000 pixels on the long edge) and never thresholded, because thresholding thin interface type breaks the letters apart.
Can it read emoji and stickers?
No. The reader recognises printed letters in English and Hindi. Emoji, stickers and images inside a chat are skipped or read as stray characters you can delete.
Where to take this next
- Image to textRead the printed English or Hindi text in a picture, in this tab, and copy or download it.
- Hindi image to textRead printed Hindi, and the English beside it, as Unicode Devanagari ready for Word.
- Images of textWhen a picture's content is its words, the alt text is the words. WCAG 1.4.5 and the limits of OCR.
- Alt text checkerPaste alt text you already have and read the findings. No picture required.
