Codex reads text out of images entirely in your browser using an open-source OCR engine — your image is never uploaded to a server. The first run in a language downloads a small recognition file, which is then cached by your browser for next time. Clear or low-contrast scans, handwriting, and stylized fonts will reduce accuracy.
About Codex
Codex extracts text from a photo, screenshot, or scan using optical character recognition (OCR) — no account, no upload, no server round-trip. Pick a language, drop in an image, and copy or download the text it finds.
Features
- Runs OCR entirely in your browser
- Supports 11 common languages
- Drag-and-drop or click-to-browse upload
- Live progress as recognition runs
- Copy to clipboard or download as .txt
- Nothing is uploaded — your image stays on your device
How to use it
- Choose the language that matches the text in your image.
- Drop an image onto the box, or click it to browse for one.
- Click "Extract Text" and wait for recognition to finish.
- Copy the result or download it as a plain text file.
Frequently asked questions
Is my image uploaded anywhere?
No. Recognition runs locally in your browser using an open-source OCR engine (Tesseract). The image file is never sent to a server — only the small language recognition data is downloaded once, from a public CDN, and then cached.
Why did the extraction come out wrong or messy?
OCR accuracy depends heavily on image quality — low resolution, tilted text, glare, low contrast, handwriting, and decorative fonts all make recognition harder. Cropping tightly to just the text and using a clear, well-lit, high-resolution image usually helps.
Can it read handwriting?
It's built for printed and typed text. Handwriting recognition is a much harder problem, and results on handwritten text will generally be unreliable.
Why does it take a while the first time?
The first time you use a given language, your browser downloads a small recognition data file for it. After that, your browser caches it, so subsequent runs in that language are faster.