OCR text recognition on Mac: the 3 best apps

OCR text recognition software can convert images or PDFs into text - even on Mac. We show you the 3 best Mac apps.

1. Free text recognition on Mac with Google Drive

For some time now, automatic text recognition has also been possible with Google Drive. Since this is accessed via the browser, it is also available on your Mac.
To use the function, you simply have to activate text recognition in the options. Then all images and PDF documents are checked for text. Now you can open the respective document to access the plain text.
Although this function is free, it is not the best text recognition. The software often "reads" wrong letters and in some cases you have to rework the text. You shouldn't blindly trust Google Drive text recognition.

Prizmo 2 is a pretty good OCR program that is typically Mac-friendly and very user-friendly.
Because the app is more like a management software for documents with built-in OCR text recognition. After you have created a new "Prizmo document", you can add various image files or PDFs and scan them. This is particularly useful if you want to link different texts.
Prizmo also has the advantage that you can edit individual text elements such as headings or paragraphs after scanning. After the scan, you don't just get a text document, you can still edit individual elements and then export them collectively.
The price of almost 45 euros is high, but the text recognition software is worth it if you want to scan many pages and edit the text.

The Russian software manufacturer ABBYY is known for its good OCR text recognition software and this is also available on the Mac.
The ABBYY Fine Reader Pro is very similar to the "Prizmo 2" app. Because the Fine Reader is also more of a document management software with a built-in OCR function. This is very precise and additional corrections are usually spared.
In addition, the ABBYY Fine Reader Pro also enables documents to be created, making it easy to organize the scanned text.
At just under 90 euros, the Fine Reader costs significantly more than the "Primzo 2" app, but offers almost the same range of functions. Only the text recognition is better in a few cases.