text extractor is not working on Japanese despite OCR language pack is installed

[heiyue-an]

Provide a description of requested docs changes

great support in English but cannot use in Japanese
powertoys v0.64.1 and win11 22623.891

[inetkachev]

Have same problem:

PS C:\Users\Ivan> [Windows.Media.Ocr.OcrEngine]::AvailableRecognizerLanguages


DisplayName     : English (United States)
LanguageTag     : en-US
NativeName      : English (United States)
Script          : Latn
LayoutDirection : Ltr
AbbreviatedName : ENG

DisplayName     : Russian
LanguageTag     : ru
NativeName      : Русский
Script          : Cyrl
LayoutDirection : Ltr
AbbreviatedName : РУС

But Cyrylic text recognised as English

[JeffJacobson]

I am also having the same problem. I know this tool USED TO WORK* on this page in an earlier version of PowerToys, but it no longer works. (I made sure I had the Japanese IME active when using the tool.)

You can get the what the text should be on that page by running this command in the browser's console.

[...document.body.querySelectorAll("img[src$='.svg'")].map(e => e.alt).join("\n")

However, I noticed that DeepL is also exhibiting similar behavior (see screenshot below), so it might be something that broke in an update to Windows itself rather than PowerToys. (I had never tried DeepL's OCR until today, so I don't know if it ever worked correctly.)

* When it "worked" it didn't get everything 100% correct, but now it returns complete gibberish.

System Info

Name	Value
PowerToys	v0.66.0
Display	XV273K
Scale	200%
Resolution	3840 x 2160 (Recommended)
Display 1	Connected to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti
Desktop mode	3840 x 2160, 119.91 Hz
Active signal mode	3840 x 2160, 119.91 Hz
Bit depth	8-bit with dithering
Color format	RGB
Color space	High dynamic range (HDR)
HDR certification	Not found More about HDR certification
Peak brightness	409 nits
Edition	Windows 11 Home
Version	22H2
Installed on	2022-09-29
OS build	22621.1105
Experience	Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22638.1000.0
Processor	12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900KF 3.19 GHz
Installed RAM	64.0 GB (63.9 GB usable)
System type	64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch	No pen or touch input is available for this display

[iamenews]

Still happening on 0.69.1 May 12.
I have JA and zh-CN installed (as shown below) but OCR only works in english on tested websites like Yahoo Japan. I was following this help article btw.

[LuisLauM]

Please devs, don't forget to solve this issue. 🙏

[TheJoeFin]

Can you confirm this is still an issue with PowerToys v0.72?

/needinfo

[hockyy]

Can you confirm this is still an issue with PowerToys v0.72?

/needinfo

@TheJoeFin yes

[hockyy]

Update:

• This only happens if both en-US and ja-JP is installed

PS C:\Users\hocky> $Capability = Get-WindowsCapability -Online | Where-Object { $_.Name -Like 'Language.OCR*en-US*' }
PS C:\Users\hocky> Get-WindowsCapability -Online | Where-Object { $_.Name -Like 'Language.OCR*' }
PS C:\Users\hocky> $Capability = Get-WindowsCapability -Online | Where-Object { $_.Name -Like 'Language.OCR*ja-JP*' }
PS C:\Users\hocky> $Capability | Add-WindowsCapability -Online

This runs fine if you abolish those en OCR packages

[hockyy]

Example result:

よ ー し、さっそく町で調査を始めましよう/

[TheJoeFin]

You have to select the language you want to OCR from the right click menu after you activate Text Extractor. If you don't select a different language, then the keyboard language will be used. By removing the other OCR languages, it seems like that could have the same effect.

Can you confirm some more details:

• Windows language
• Keyboard language
• Have you tried changing language via context menu?

/needinfo

[hockyy]

• Windows Language is English
• Keyboard language is english (2 keyboards available but english is chosen)
• Havent tried to change the language in the context menu
  @TheJoeFin

[TheJoeFin]

I am going to update the UI to make the language changing obvious. Please try changing language with the right click menu when all languages are installed. Comment here if that fixes the issue.

/needinfo

[TheJoeFin]

/needinfo

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has been marked as requiring author feedback but has not had any activity for 5 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 5 days of this comment.