TextSniper

TextSniper solves one small, constant annoyance: text you can see on your Mac but cannot select. Press a shortcut (Cmd+Shift+2 by default), drag a box around anything on screen — a paused YouTube frame, a slide in a screencast, a scanned PDF, a photo, an app dialog — and the recognised text is copied to the clipboard, ready to paste.

How it works. It lives in the menu bar rather than the Dock and behaves like the built-in screenshot tool, except the output is text instead of an image. It is fast enough to feel instant, which is the thing reviewers from Macworld, 9to5Mac and MacStories keep coming back to.

Beyond plain text. It reads QR codes and barcodes from the screen, so you do not need a phone to open one, and it can read recognised text aloud with text-to-speech — useful for language learners and as an assistive tool for people with dyslexia.

Languages and limits. Supported languages depend on the macOS version: English only on Catalina; Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Chinese from Big Sur; Japanese, Korean, Ukrainian and Russian from Ventura. The developer notes it can misread text dense with symbols, such as source code.

Pricing. A one-time purchase with no subscription, sold on the Mac App Store (where it was an Editors' Choice) and directly, with per-Mac, three-Mac and unlimited licences and a 7-day money-back guarantee on direct purchases. Requires macOS Catalina or newer and runs on Apple silicon.