Quick answer: In Snagit, open the Capture window, select the Image tab, set Selection to Grab Text, then capture your area. Or open an existing screenshot in Snagit Editor, right-click the image, and choose Grab Text. Copy the result from the Grab Text Results dialog. To get unformatted output, enable Plain Text (Windows) or Make Plain Text (Mac) before copying. If Grab Text stopped working after May 1, 2026, update to Snagit 2026.1.1 or later, or Snagit 2025.4.2 or later.
Before anything else: if Grab Text suddenly stopped working for you around May 2026, you are not alone and you are not doing anything wrong. TechSmith's third-party OCR license expired, and the fix requires updating Snagit to a supported version. The same issue affects Edit Text and Smart Redact, not just Grab Text. More on that below.
For everyone else, here is exactly how to copy text from a screenshot in Snagit using the built-in Grab Text feature.
Snagit Grab Text OCR: What It Actually Does in 2026
Snagit uses the ABBYY OCR engine to read text from images. When you run Grab Text on a screenshot, Snagit passes the image to that engine, which analyzes letter shapes and converts them into editable characters. TechSmith lists Snagit text recognition as on-device processing, meaning no internet connection is required. The result lands in the Grab Text Results dialog, where you can copy everything or just the sections you need.
I use this almost daily for SOP documentation work — particularly when pulling error messages from software installations, copying visible text from PDF screenshots where the text layer is not accessible, or grabbing table content from vendor screenshots that were never meant to be editable. In 37 minutes of work that used to mean manual retyping, Grab Text handles it in under 3.
Two things worth knowing upfront: the first Grab Text of any Snagit session runs noticeably slower than subsequent ones, because the ABBYY engine has to initialize. After that first run, response time is fast. Also, Grab Text works on images already open in the editor, not just live captures.
Snagit Grab Text Method 1: At Capture Time
This is the faster path when you know in advance you want text from a specific area of your screen.
- Open the Snagit Capture window.
- Click the Image tab.
- In the Selection dropdown, choose Grab Text.
- Click Capture (or press Print Screen on Windows, or Shift+Ctrl+C on Mac).
- The orange crosshairs appear. Click and drag to select the area containing the text you want.
- The Grab Text Results dialog opens automatically in Snagit Editor.
- Click Copy All to copy everything, then paste it wherever you need it.
If you only need part of the extracted text, you can select it manually inside the Results dialog before copying. Most tutorials skip over this, but it saves you a clean-up step when the capture area contained both relevant and irrelevant text.
Snagit Grab Text Method 2: From an Existing Screenshot in the Editor
This one gets used when you already captured an image — or opened an existing file — and realized afterward that you need the text out of it.
- Open the image in Snagit Editor. If it is already in your recent captures, click it in the tray at the bottom.
- Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) directly on the image canvas.
- Select Grab Text from the context menu.
- The Grab Text Results dialog opens.
- Click Copy All, or select specific text within the dialog and copy that.
You can also use the Selection tool first — click and drag to select a region of the image, then right-click and choose Grab Text. This works better than running Grab Text on the entire image when you only need one section. It also tends to produce cleaner output when the image has mixed content like charts, icons, and text blocks together.
How to Get Plain Text Output (No Fonts or Formatting)
Most of the time when I grab text from a screenshot, I do not want it to carry over Snagit's OCR guess at the original font. Pasting formatted text into a Confluence page or a Word doc and watching it fight with the document styles is its own problem.
In the Grab Text Results dialog, look for the Plain text option on Windows, or Make Plain Text on Mac. Check that before clicking Copy All. The output will paste as unformatted text that picks up whatever style your destination document uses.
I leave this checked by default. There have been exactly 4 times in 3 years where I needed Snagit's font detection, and I cannot remember what any of them were.
Snagit OCR Failures: What Breaks Grab Text and Why
Grab Text does not work on everything, and the TechSmith best practices documentation is unusually honest about the limitations.
Slanted or rotated text is not recognized. The ABBYY engine expects horizontal text. If you have captured a screenshot with diagonal labels or rotated UI elements, try rotating the image in Snagit Editor first, then run Grab Text again.
Low-contrast text causes problems. Light gray text on a white background, or white text on a pale background — Snagit tends to miss or garble it. High contrast (dark text on light background) gives the most reliable results.
Shadowed text can trip up OCR entirely, either producing wrong characters or returning nothing.
Text inside bordered boxes or table cells is sometimes missed because the border is detected as a boundary rather than ignored. Workaround: use the Selection tool to select only the text content within the box, then run Grab Text on that selection instead of the whole image.
Very small fonts may not register at all. The rule of thumb from TechSmith: if you can read the text on screen, Snagit should be able to capture it. If it is too small to read comfortably, zoom in on the source before capturing.
Large captures — scrolling captures especially — take longer to process. This is not a bug; the ABBYY engine is doing more work.
Why Grab Text Stopped Working in 2026: The OCR License Issue
Starting May 1, 2026, Grab Text, Edit Text, and Smart Redact all stopped functioning for Snagit users who had not updated their software. The cause was an expiration of the third-party ABBYY OCR license that Snagit depends on. TechSmith shipped updates to renew the license, but only for versions still under active engineering support.
If you are getting a "Cannot recognize text" error, or the Grab Text option is greyed out, check your Snagit version via Help > About Snagit. The versions that received the refreshed OCR license are:
- Snagit 2026.1.1 or later
- Snagit 2025.4.2 or later
- Supported Snagit 2024 builds — check TechSmith's OCR issues support page for the specific minimum build
Snagit 2023 and older are outside the supported update path for this OCR-license fix. If OCR is part of your workflow, upgrading is the practical path forward. Snagit subscription pricing starts at around $39/year for individuals at the time of writing.
To update: Help > Check for Updates > Install Updates. If that option is not available, your installation may be managed by an IT administrator — contact them directly.
Snagit vs ShareX: Grab Text vs OCR
ShareX is free, open-source, and Windows-only. It includes an OCR tool under Tools that uses Windows' built-in recognition engine rather than ABBYY. You draw a selection, text appears in a dialog. For basic screen text on clean backgrounds, it works and goes directly to clipboard without extra steps.
Where Snagit's Grab Text has an advantage is accuracy on complex images — mixed content, smaller fonts, PDF screenshots, UI with varied backgrounds. The ABBYY engine that Snagit uses is a commercial OCR product with a longer track record on document-type content. ShareX's Windows OCR is capable but noticeably less accurate when the image quality is anything less than ideal.
ShareX also has no equivalent to Snagit's Edit Text feature, which lets you replace text directly within the screenshot image itself. If you are fixing a typo in a UI label or updating a price in a product screenshot, Snagit handles that in a single step. In ShareX, that requires exporting to an image editor.
For most users who already own Snagit, there is no reason to switch. For users who need OCR on Windows and do not want to pay for software, ShareX is the practical free option.
Snagit vs CleanShot X: OCR Feature Comparison
CleanShot X is Mac-only, priced at $29 one-time for a single Mac (with optional $19/year renewal for continued updates). Its OCR feature — called Capture Text — is faster to invoke than Snagit's. You assign a keyboard shortcut to "Capture Area - OCR," press it, drag, and the text lands in your clipboard with no dialog in between. No editor opens, no Copy All button to click. For pure text extraction speed, CleanShot X has Snagit beat on Mac.
What CleanShot X does not have is Snagit's Edit Text feature, the Step Capture tool, TechSmith Assets integration, or Snagit's level of annotation depth. If you work on a Mac and your primary use case is extracting text from screenshots with minimal friction, CleanShot X is worth considering. If you do detailed documentation work, create annotated SOPs, or need Windows compatibility, Snagit is still the better fit.
Snagit vs Greenshot: Does Greenshot Have OCR?
Greenshot has no modern built-in OCR workflow. Older plugin-based workarounds exist on Windows, but they are not reliable enough to recommend for a 2026 documentation workflow and require manual setup that does not hold up consistently across Windows versions.
If OCR is part of your regular workflow, Greenshot is not the right tool. It works well as a free, lightweight capture and annotation tool for Windows users who do not need text extraction. Snagit's Grab Text is simply a different category of feature — built-in, accurate on most content, and integrated with everything else in the editor.
Snagit Grab Text FAQ
Is Snagit better than ShareX for OCR?
For most use cases, yes. Snagit's ABBYY engine tends to produce more accurate output on complex images, mixed content, and document-style screenshots. ShareX uses Windows' built-in OCR, which handles standard screen text well but is less accurate on lower-quality images. ShareX is free; Snagit starts at around $39/year. If budget is the deciding factor, ShareX handles standard screen text well enough.
Why is my Snagit Grab Text not working?
The most likely cause in 2026 is an outdated OCR license. TechSmith's third-party ABBYY OCR license expired May 1, 2026, breaking Grab Text, Edit Text, and Smart Redact for users on older versions. Update to Snagit 2026.1.1 or later, or Snagit 2025.4.2 or later, via Help > Check for Updates. Snagit 2023 and earlier are outside the supported update path for this fix.
Can Snagit extract text from a PDF?
Yes. Screenshot the PDF page in Snagit and run Grab Text on the capture, or open an existing image file in Snagit Editor and run Grab Text from there — this works without capturing anything new. It handles standard PDF text well; scanned PDFs with low resolution produce less reliable results.
Does Snagit work offline for OCR?
Yes. TechSmith lists Snagit text recognition as on-device processing. The ABBYY engine runs locally and no internet connection is required for Grab Text to function.
How do I get plain text output from Snagit Grab Text?
In the Grab Text Results dialog, check the Plain text option (Windows) or Make Plain Text (Mac) before clicking Copy All. This strips font and color formatting from the extracted text.
Is Snagit worth it for documentation work?
If you create SOPs, training materials, or software documentation regularly, yes. Grab Text, Edit Text, scrolling capture, and Step Capture together cover the main friction points in documentation work. For occasional use or basic screen capture, cheaper alternatives exist.
One practical note: if you capture screenshots with mixed text and graphics often — UI walkthroughs, vendor portals, anything with varied layouts — run Grab Text on a selection rather than the full image. You will get cleaner output and spend less time cleaning up the results.