Arabic OCR: image to text
Arabic OCR for photos, scans and screenshots: add the image and get Arabic text you can copy, edit and search, in the right reading order, ready for Word.
Why Arabic is hard for OCR, and how this tool handles it
Arabic letters join and change shape depending on their position in the word, dots tell many letters apart, and lines run right to left while numbers and Latin words inside them run left to right. Many OCR tools were built for Latin text first and read Arabic as a jumble of reversed words. Here every line is found first, then read by an engine trained on Arabic script, on a cleaned-up copy of the line with shadows and paper tint removed. The lines are put back in right-to-left order, and the Word download is set right to left too.
What reads well
- Printed Arabic in Naskh-style fonts: letters, official documents, books, printed forms.
- Screenshots of Arabic websites, posts and chats.
- Documents that mix Arabic with French or English, common in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Lebanon.
- Not handwriting or heavily decorative calligraphy, which no browser OCR reads reliably yet.
For the cleanest Arabic text
- 1Photograph the page straight on in daylight; the dots of ب ت ث ن ي are what get lost first in a dark or blurry photo.
- 2Keep English or French selected next to Arabic when the document mixes them, so Latin words and numbers are read correctly.
- 3Crop away the parts you do not need: smaller images with only the text read faster and more accurately.
Questions about Arabic OCR: image to text
How do I extract Arabic text from an image?+
Add the image or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V. Arabic is already selected, so click Extract text, then copy the text or download it as TXT or Word.
Does it work with Arabic and French in the same document?+
Yes. Choose Arabic and French (up to three languages). Each line is read in both scripts and the clearer reading is kept, so a French address inside an Arabic letter comes out right.
Are vowel marks (tashkeel) kept?+
Yes, when the text is really vocalized, as in religious or teaching texts. In ordinary text, specks that look like vowel marks are removed so they do not clutter the result.
Will the Word file be right to left?+
Yes. Download Word (.docx) gives an editable document with right-to-left Arabic paragraphs, so you can fix a word and keep writing.
Is my image uploaded?+
No. Recognition runs in your browser; the language data downloads once and your images never leave your device.