GNOME Screenshot OCR is a simple, native tool for the GNOME desktop environment that allows users to instantly extract text or scan QR codes directly from a selected area of their screen via a screenshot.
GitHub Repository: funinkina/Gnome-OCR-Screenshot
Why I made this?
Oftentimes I needed to copy a error or debug message from the screen but it won’t be in a nice text box, so i decided to make this simple utility to do that for me.
How it is built
This tool is primarily built using Python 3. It leverages python-gobject and GTK 4 to integrate natively with the GNOME desktop environment, specifically utilizing the GNOME screenshot portal for capturing screen regions. The core functionality relies on Python Tesseract OCR (pytesseract) for the optical character recognition part, and pyzbar (optionally) for scanning QR codes. The project emphasizes minimal dependencies and a single file structure to make it easy to set up and integrate with keyboard shortcuts.
Current features
The GNOME Screenshot OCR tool currently provides the following capabilities:
- Uses the native GNOME screenshot portal for capturing.
- Has minimal dependencies (
pytesseract,pyzbar). - Is a single file for easy shortcut setup.
- Can scan QR codes automatically without extra configuration.
- Allows saving extracted text directly to a file.
- Allows copying extracted text directly to the clipboard.
- Supports multiple languages for OCR (based on installed Tesseract language packs).
- Offers a customizable default save location for text files.
- Supports customizable keyboard shortcuts for quick access.