djinncoyote

I often copy text which is shown on my computer screen and paste it into my notes files. Selecting and copying text with the mouse or keyboard is usually not a problem. But sometimes the text can't be selected, and sometimes webpages disable copy functions.

Previously, my favorite tool to get around that problem was Textify by Ramen Software. When you hover over the text you want copied and click (with a configurable mouse button), it copies the text to your Windows clipboard. From there, you can paste it into other windows like usual. The Textify tool has a few drawbacks: copying text in certain dialog windows still doesn't work, and sometimes it only copies a single line of text so you may have to click and paste a few times to copy multiple lines of text.

A while back, I discovered a feature in Windows 11's "Snipping Tool" which also lets you copy text from the screen. It uses OCR (optical character recognition) to extract text from images and doesn't have either of the drawbacks mentioned before. It even works well when copying foreground text displayed on a multi-colored background image, a task I thought it might have trouble with.

This page shows how to use the feature:
Copy Text from Captured Screenshot Image with Snipping Tool app in Windows 11

Since version 11.2503.27.0, the tool makes it even easier to copy text, without the need to take a screenshot first:
Copy Text on Screen using Text Extractor in Snipping Tool app in Windows 11