QuickOCR 1.2.0 - Final release

This is the final release. QuickOCR has reached end of life.

The Windows Snipping Tool can now copy text straight out of a screenshot (its Text actions
button, on Windows 11), which covers most of what QuickOCR does. I finished this release to
finish the project. QuickOCR still works and stays available here, but no further updates or
support are planned.

A new look

• New icon. Viewfinder brackets around lines of text, sharp at every size from the taskbar
  to the desktop. It replaces the old image.
• Redesigned window. On Windows 11 it has rounded corners and a border like a native
  window. The title bar shows the icon and version, and the Capture text button changes
  on hover and while it reads.
• Clearer language picker. It shows names ("English + French") instead of codes, in a
  dropdown that matches the rest of the window.
• Better result popup. A clear tick, or a warning when the read is unreliable. It previews
  up to four lines of what was copied, with the word count and confidence. A countdown bar
  shows when it will close, and it pauses while your mouse is over the popup.
• The exe identifies itself. Its name, version and publisher now show in
  Properties → Details and in Task Manager.

Fixes

• A separate Tesseract install could break recognition. If you had installed Tesseract
  yourself, its settings overrode QuickOCR's bundled language data. English + French quietly
  lost French, and French on its own read nothing at all. QuickOCR now always uses its own data.
• Real errors were reported as "No text found". A missing or broken component now shows
  the actual error.
• The "press Esc to cancel" hint could be off-screen on some multi-monitor layouts. It now
  appears on the monitor you are using.
• The result popup always opened on the primary monitor. It now opens where you captured.
• Starting a new capture closes the previous popup, so it can't end up in your snip.
• Closing the app from the taskbar while minimized now saves your settings.
• Settings are saved safely. A failed save no longer wipes your previous settings.

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Windows 10/11, no installation, no admin rights. Tesseract is bundled.
Full history in the changelog.

QuickOCR 1.1.0

This release fixes the problems reported against 1.0.1, including the one where the screen
appeared to freeze. If you are on 1.0.1, please update.

The frozen screen

The capture overlay covered the whole desktop, stayed on top of everything, and had no working
way out — Escape did nothing, because the overlay never actually received keyboard focus.
Anything you opened to escape the situation, Task Manager included, opened behind it. If the
app stalled while the overlay was up, Windows replaced it with a blank white copy of the window.

Now:

• Escape works. So does right-click, and a single click without dragging.
• The overlay gets out of the way the moment another window takes over, so nothing is ever
  trapped behind it.
• It closes itself after two minutes no matter what.
• Every way a capture can end now closes the overlay and gives you the app back.

Text that came out wrong, or never arrived

• Grey and low-contrast text was being destroyed before Tesseract ever saw it. Anything
  lighter than about #5a5a5a was silently garbled or erased entirely — Balance 1,024.50 USD
  came back as 2Paance 10e4.50 JSS, or as nothing at all. QuickOCR now tries several
  approaches and keeps whichever one Tesseract is most confident about.
• "Copied to clipboard" was claimed whether or not it worked. The text is now read back and
  checked before anything is claimed, and you get a clear error if it failed.
• Low-confidence results are flagged instead of being presented as a clean read, so you know
  to check before pasting.
• The overlay's own dimming could end up baked into the capture, throwing the result off. It is
  now hidden before the screen is grabbed.
• Multi-monitor setups with different scaling captured the wrong part of the screen. Fixed.
• Reading no longer freezes the window — it happens in the background.

Languages

Text in other languages came out mangled — German Größe read as GroBe, Spanish niño as
nino. That was never a text-encoding problem: QuickOCR simply only had English and French
recognition data.

• There is now a Language picker in the window, and your choice is remembered.
• You can add any language yourself: drop the .traineddata file from
  tessdata_fast into Tesseract-OCR/tessdata/.
  Nothing else to change. See the README.
• This build still ships English and French only.

Tesseract is most accurate with a single language selected, so prefer one over a combination.

Smaller download

46 MB, down from 84 MB. The old build carried the entire Tesseract distribution — 22 unused
libraries, 17 training tools, an uninstaller and some Java components that the app never touched.
Startup is quicker too, since all of that was being unpacked every time you launched it.

Reporting problems

QuickOCR now keeps a log at %APPDATA%\QuickOCR\quickocr.log. Attaching it to an issue makes a
problem far easier to track down — the previous version recorded nothing at all.

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Windows 10/11, no installation, no admin rights. Tesseract is bundled.

QuickOCR v1.0.1 - DPI Fix

QuickOCR v1.0.1

Fixes

• High-DPI Display Fix: Resolved an issue where the capture zone was offset or misaligned on laptops and screens with scaling (e.g., 125% or 150%).
• Taskbar Visibility: Fixed an issue where the application window would sometimes disappear from the taskbar.

Improvements

• New UI Feedback: Added a "Copied to Clipboard" popup with helpful instructions (Ctrl+V).
• Performance: Completely refactored the engine to remove heavy dependencies (PyQt). The application is now lighter and faster.

QuickOCR v1.0.0 - Official Release

QuickOCR v1.0.0

Portable, offline OCR utility for Windows. Instantly captures text from images, videos, games, and restricted UI elements (error logs, installers).

What it does

• Visual Snipping: Click "CAPTURE ZONE" and draw a box. Text is copied to clipboard.
• Game Ready: Uses custom filters ("Holographic" processing) to read white text on noisy/colored backgrounds (RPG menus, translucent UI).
• Bilingual: Auto-detects English and French simultaneously.
• Upscaling: 300% Lanczos upscaling on capture to fix small font errors.
• Portable: Single .exe. No install, no admin rights needed.

Usage

1. Download the .7z file below.
2. Run QuickOCR.exe.
3. Click CAPTURE ZONE, draw your box, paste the text.

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⚠️ License (GPLv3)

This software is Free and Open Source.

• Do not pay for this.
• You cannot sell this software without providing the source code.
• See LICENSE file for details.