Long reserved for Microsoft PowerToys, the OCR function is now directly linked to the screen capture tool, without the need to save a screenshot.
For many years - since Windows 95 in fact - Microsoft has been distributing what are known as PowerToys. These are tools, modules that users can add to their operating system to unlock certain features that the publisher deems "accessory", but which are often quite practical. Over time, some of these PowerToys were integrated directly into Windows, losing their appeal... until Windows 11 and the latest generation of PowerToys, for example, introduced a text recognition function.
Text extraction directly on the application bar Screenshot © Windows Latest
This highly practical function was requested by many users who don't use PowerToys, and Microsoft seems to have listened. As Windows Latest explains, it's through the already excellent Screen Capture application that Microsoft has decided to let us benefit - without needing PowerToys, that is - from this character recognition. Let's be more precise: character recognition had already been integrated into both Screen Capture and Photos for several weeks. However, there was one constraint: you had to save a capture before extracting the required text. This intermediate step made the operation more cumbersome and slower.
Microsoft has therefore updated the Screen Capture application. Version 11.2503.27.0 adds a new " text extractor " functionality to the toolbar. Simply launch a screenshot, press this icon and select the area of the screen containing the text you wish to extract. Windows then uses the same recognition engine as before - Media OCR - so there's no need to go through the "save image" stage. Windows Latest, which was able to test the feature, points out that it has not yet been rolled out to everyone: it should be in the next few weeks.
