The free route is Live Text: screenshot the text and open the picture in Preview. TRex is a free open-source app that does what TextSniper does. LeafyApp is a different thing, for when you want the word explained and kept instead of copied.
The free options first
If you only ever copy text out of an image now and then, you may not need an app. Take a screenshot with ⇧⌘4, open the file in Preview, and hold the pointer over the text. That is Apple's Live Text, described in the Preview guide. It costs nothing, it is already installed, and it covers photos, PDFs that are really pictures, and screenshots.
It is a few steps long, it only works on a still file, and Apple notes it is not available in every region or language. If the selection cursor never appears, this page goes through why.
TRex is the closest free match to TextSniper. It is an open-source project under the MIT licence, on GitHub, with a download on the releases page and a Homebrew cask. The GitHub page says it runs on macOS Big Sur and up. There is also a Mac App Store version, listed at $7.99 and needing macOS 14.6 (as of November 2026). Its listing says it reads text from non-selectable PDFs, screenshots, YouTube videos and screen-shared calls, works offline for the core recognition, and reads QR codes and barcodes.
What TextSniper is
TextSniper is the paid one people compare against. On its own site it is a one-time purchase: $7.99 for one Mac, $9.99 for three, $11.99 unlimited (as of November 2026). It needs macOS Catalina or newer. The default shortcut is ⌘⇧2, you drag over text on screen, and it lands in the clipboard. The languages it recognises depend on your macOS version.
It is quick and it does one job. If that job is what you need, it is a fair price and the sensible choice over a free tool you will never set up.
Where LeafyApp fits, and where it does not
LeafyApp starts the same way: ⌥A, then drag a box over anything on screen. macOS text recognition reads that patch. After that it goes somewhere different. You get the word explained for the sentence it sits in, you can translate the boxed passage, and the word is saved with its sentence, source and date.
It is not a plain copy-to-clipboard OCR tool. If you want a paragraph pasted into a document, a table pulled out of a screenshot, or a QR code read, take TextSniper or TRex. LeafyApp will do none of those better and it is not trying to.
Who should pick which
You want to
Pick
Copy text from a picture now and then
Live Text in Preview
Copy from anything on screen, free
TRex from GitHub
Copy from anything on screen, no setup, one payment
TextSniper
Understand a word in a book, PDF, video or app, and keep it
LeafyApp
They do not exclude each other. Someone who pastes screenshots into notes all day and also reads in another language could reasonably have both.
What you get from the second kind of tool
The part that matters if you are learning. The saved list is words with the exact line they came from, searchable and sorted into folders. Review cards are fill-in-the-blank, built from those sentences. You can send them to Anki, or export to CSV, Excel, JSON or PDF.
It works on text you cannot select, which is where most people first reach for an OCR tool: scanned PDFs, game text, image-only interfaces. The page on text you cannot select has the cases. It runs on a Mac with macOS 14 or later and is free while in beta.
The picture is read on your Mac and thrown away. Only the word and its sentence go out so the AI can explain it, with nothing attached that says who you are, and your library stays on the Mac. See the privacy page.
Questions people ask
Is there a free TextSniper alternative for Mac? Yes. Live Text in Preview is built in, and TRex is open source under the MIT licence on GitHub. TRex also has a paid Mac App Store version, listed at $7.99 as of November 2026.
What is the best free TextSniper alternative? For copying text from anywhere on screen, TRex is the closest match. For one-off pictures, a screenshot opened in Preview costs nothing and needs no install.
Can LeafyApp copy text like TextSniper? It is not built as a copy tool. It reads the boxed text, explains the word in context, translates it and saves it. If you mainly want text on the clipboard, use TextSniper or TRex.
Does TextSniper cost money? Yes. Its site lists a one-time $7.99 licence for one Mac, $9.99 for three Macs and $11.99 unlimited, as of November 2026.
Copying is one job. Understanding the word is another.
Free while LeafyApp is in beta. One download, macOS 14 and up.
TextSniper, TRex, Live Text, Preview and Anki are trademarks of their respective owners. LeafyApp is an independent app, not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them, and the names are used here only to describe compatibility and for comparison.