Setup and Configuration

Recognition quality depends on having the right language data and a good image. This page covers the settings that affect accuracy and everyday use.

1. Install OCR languages

Windows OCR (PowerToys, Text Grab)

These apps can only recognize languages that have the Windows optical character recognition feature installed.

1. Open language settingsSettings → Time & language → Language & region.
2. Add a languageClick Add a language, choose it, and make sure Optical character recognition (or the basic typing / handwriting features) is included.
3. Restart the OCR appThe new language then appears in the app's language menu.

You can also do this from an elevated PowerShell window:

# List available and installed OCR language capabilities
Get-WindowsCapability -Online | Where-Object { $_.Name -like 'Language.OCR*' }

# Install, for example, German OCR
Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name "Language.OCR~~~de-DE~0.0.1.0"

Tesseract-based apps (NAPS2, Capture2Text, Tesseract)

• NAPS2: click the OCR button → Download languages.
• Capture2Text: English and some other languages come in the zip. Extra .traineddata files go in its tessdata folder.
• Tesseract: rerun the installer and add languages, or copy .traineddata files into C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR\tessdata. Use -l eng+deu for documents that mix languages.

2. Set a hotkey

Pick a combination no other app uses. See Conflicts and Configuration Issues if a hotkey does nothing.

3. Choose output behavior

• Copy to clipboard: the default in all screen tools.
• Show a popup or edit window: useful for checking the text before you paste it. Text Grab's Edit Text window and Capture2Text's popup do this.
• Keep line breaks: turn this off to get one continuous paragraph. In Capture2Text use the "Keep line breaks" option. In Text Grab use its trimming tools.
• Searchable PDF: in NAPS2, turn on OCR in OCR settings so every saved PDF has a hidden text layer.

4. Start with Windows

• PowerToys: Settings → General → Run at startup.
• Text Grab: Settings → Run at startup.
• Portable apps: put a shortcut in shell:startup.
• You can check or turn off startup entries in Task Manager → Startup apps.

5. Get better accuracy

• Zoom in before you capture. OCR handles text around 20 px tall or larger much better.
• Dark text on a light background works best. Some apps can invert colors.
• Scan paper at 300 DPI. Higher resolutions rarely help and slow down processing.
• Straighten (deskew) photos of documents first. NAPS2 has a deskew option.
• Set the correct language. Leaving it on English for other languages causes most garbled results.