This script allows to do on Linux desktop PC some simple ocr tasks that we currently can do on Android using Google lens

README.md

Google Lens For Ubuntu

For those who use Google Lens on Android as an OCR to capture text from images, screenshots, etc.. here is a bash script that does the same on Ubuntu.

Sometimes we need to copy a telephone number in an APP where there isn't a copy to clipboard feature enabled or maybe to copy texts from an picture.

This can be done with a OCR, this script does that allowing to drag&drop select a region of the screen and copy to clipboard the text parsed from the image.

#!/bin/bash 
# Dependencies: tesseract-ocr imagemagick scrot xsel

tesseract_lang=eng
# quick language menu, add more if you need other languages.

SCR_IMG=`mktemp`
trap "rm $SCR_IMG*" EXIT

scrot -s $SCR_IMG.png -q 100
# increase image quality with option -q from default 75 to 100

mogrify -modulate 100,0 -resize 400% $SCR_IMG.png
#should increase detection rate

tesseract $SCR_IMG.png $SCR_IMG &> /dev/null
cat $SCR_IMG.txt | xsel -bi

exit

Usage

If you save the script in /usr/bin/lens, the usage will be like this:

1. ALT+F2, type 'lens' and hit ENTER
2. Select the region you want to capture with the mouse
3. Paste the clipboard-copied text with the OCR'ed data

Amazing script. Thanks very much for this solution!

Very Cool! Thanks for that!
What do i need to add/change for it to support German "umlauts"? (ü,ö,ä)

Variable "tesseract_lang=eng" is defined but not used. It ok for English which is default for tesseract but for other languages you need to specify language in tesseract command e.g.:
LANG=deu
or
LANG=eng+deu

tesseract $SCR_IMG.png $SCR_IMG -l $LANG &> /dev/null

Send Notification

You can add this line before exit. This will send a notification once the text is copied!

notify-send --app-name "Text copier" --icon "/home/shad/Pictures/dock Icons/screensearchIcon.png" "Text copied from the screen" "Now you can paste it wherever you like"

Hi, I had to make some changes to run this script under Wayland on Gnome, since scrot is not supported under Wayland and since I'm using Gnome I did the following changes, I also integrated other's suggestions like adding a notification popup and support for multiple detection languages with tesseract, to grab the screen area I'm using gnome-screenshot since it's pretty easy to use and does work with Wayland:

#!/bin/bash 
# Dependencies: tesseract-ocr imagemagick scrot xsel gnome-screenshot libnotify-bin

#tesseract_lang=eng+ita
LANG=eng+ita
# quick language menu, add more if you need other languages.

SCR_IMG=`mktemp`
trap "rm $SCR_IMG*" EXIT

#grim -g "$(slurp)" -q 100 -l 1 $SCR_IMG.png
#scrot -s -f $SCR_IMG.png -q 100
gnome-screenshot -a -f $SCR_IMG.png
# increase image quality with option -q from default 75 to 100

mogrify -modulate 100,0 -resize 400% $SCR_IMG.png

#should increase detection rate

#tesseract $SCR_IMG.png $SCR_IMG &> /dev/null
tesseract $SCR_IMG.png $SCR_IMG -l $LANG &> /dev/null

cat $SCR_IMG.txt | xsel -bi

notify-send --app-name "Text copier" --icon "/home/chromiell/Documents/Scripts/TextGrabber.png" "Text copied from the screen" "Now you can paste it wherever you like"

exit

Hi, I had to make some changes to run this script under Wayland on Gnome, since scrot is not supported under Wayland and since I'm using Gnome I did the following changes, I also integrated other's suggestions like adding a notification popup and support for multiple detection languages with tesseract, to grab the screen area I'm using gnome-screenshot since it's pretty easy to use and does work with Wayland:

#!/bin/bash 
# Dependencies: tesseract-ocr imagemagick scrot xsel gnome-screenshot libnotify-bin

#tesseract_lang=eng+ita
LANG=eng+ita
# quick language menu, add more if you need other languages.

SCR_IMG=`mktemp`
trap "rm $SCR_IMG*" EXIT

#grim -g "$(slurp)" -q 100 -l 1 $SCR_IMG.png
#scrot -s -f $SCR_IMG.png -q 100
gnome-screenshot -a -f $SCR_IMG.png
# increase image quality with option -q from default 75 to 100

mogrify -modulate 100,0 -resize 400% $SCR_IMG.png

#should increase detection rate

#tesseract $SCR_IMG.png $SCR_IMG &> /dev/null
tesseract $SCR_IMG.png $SCR_IMG -l $LANG &> /dev/null

cat $SCR_IMG.txt | xsel -bi

notify-send --app-name "Text copier" --icon "/home/chromiell/Documents/Scripts/TextGrabber.png" "Text copied from the screen" "Now you can paste it wherever you like"

exit

thank you very much for your contribution!!🥰

man you are a lifesaver

I updated the script to support Sway, KDE, and GNOME by dynamically selecting the appropriate screenshot tool based on the current Window Manager or Desktop Environment in use. As of 2024-07-01, KDE does not support wlr-screencopy-unstable-v1.

#!/bin/bash

# Dependencies: tesseract-ocr, imagemagick, (grim, slurp[Sway]), spectacle[KDE], gnome-screenshot[GNOME], wl-clipboard, libnotify-bin

# Add more if you need other languages. Example: eng+ita
tesseract_lang=eng

SCR_IMG=$(mktemp)

notify() {
    notify-send "OCR Script" "$1"
}

take_screenshot() {
    case "$XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP" in
        KDE)
            spectacle --region --background --nonotify --output "$SCR_IMG"
            ;;
        GNOME)
            gnome-screenshot -a -f "$SCR_IMG"
            ;;
        *)
            grim -g "$(slurp)" "$SCR_IMG"
            ;;
    esac
}

trap 'rm -f "$SCR_IMG"*' EXIT

take_screenshot

notify "Processing image for text extraction..."

# Enhance the image for better OCR
mogrify -modulate 100,0 -resize 400% "$SCR_IMG"

# Performs the OCR on the screenshot
tesseract "$SCR_IMG" "$SCR_IMG" -l "$tesseract_lang" &> /dev/null

# Copy OCR result to clipboard
wl-copy < "${SCR_IMG}.txt"

notify "Text successfully copied to clipboard."

Great @Devbrat-Dev ! thank you for the addition! 👏