Unpixel vs Live Text: when the built-in tool is enough

Every Mac with Live Text turned on can already copy words out of pictures, for free. So the honest question isn’t which tool is better, but whether the free one covers the places your text turns up. This page compares Live Text, as Apple describes it for macOS 26, with Unpixel, the capture app we make, and says plainly when you should save your money.

What Live Text does well

Live Text treats the text in an image like text in a document. In Preview, Photos, Quick Look, Safari and paused video in QuickTime Player, you hover until the pointer becomes a text cursor, drag, and copy. Control-click the selection for more:

• Copy Text, Look Up and Translate, straight from the menu.
• Search with your default search engine.
• Act on details. Phone numbers, email addresses and websites get a small arrow, with options such as calling, adding a contact or opening the link.

It needs no setup beyond one switch, it costs nothing, and recognition happens on your Mac. For a photo of a whiteboard, a receipt you saved or a screenshot you’ve already opened, it’s hard to beat. Apple lists the supported languages on its macOS Feature Availability page, and notes that Live Text isn’t available in every region or language.

Where it can’t reach

Live Text lives inside apps, not on the screen as a whole. Text that isn’t an image in a supported app has to become one first. That rules out, without a detour:

• a slide in a Zoom, Teams or Google Meet screen share
• a dialog, a menu or an app’s settings window
• a game, a remote desktop session or a virtual machine
• paused video in most third-party players

The detour works, and it’s free. Press ⌃⇧⌘4 and drag over the text; the Control key copies the screenshot instead of saving a file. In Preview, choose File → New from Clipboard, then select the words and copy them. Done twice a week, that’s fine. Done twenty times a day, it’s exactly the job capture apps exist for.

In Unpixel, the same job is one gesture. Press ⇧⌘2, drag over the words wherever they are, and let go; the text is on your clipboard and no screenshot file is created. It reads what’s on screen, so it can’t see video that macOS blocks from capture, such as many streaming services. Live Text can’t either.

Extras: tables, QR codes and history

Beyond reach, three differences decide most cases.

Tables. Apple’s Live Text guides describe selecting and copying text, not cells, so a table you copy usually needs sorting into columns by hand. Unpixel recognizes a captured grid as a table and pastes it into Numbers, Excel or Google Sheets as rows and columns. Our table capture page explains how it decides what counts as a table.

QR codes and barcodes. Apple doesn’t document QR codes as part of Live Text on the Mac. Unpixel decodes QR codes and common barcodes in a selection and copies their contents, such as a link or a Wi-Fi password.

History. Live Text copies to the clipboard and forgets. Unpixel keeps a searchable history on your Mac, filtered into Text, Links and QR Codes, with the app each capture came from. You can turn it off or cap its size in Settings → History.

Translation

Both can translate. With Live Text, you select words, Control-click and choose Translate, and a panel shows the result in the language you pick. That’s ideal for understanding a sign in a photo.

Unpixel translates as part of the capture: hold ⌥ as you let go, and the clipboard holds the translation instead of the original, ready to paste into a reply or a document. It uses Apple’s on-device Translation framework, and macOS asks before downloading a language. A captured table is translated cell by cell and still pastes as a table. If you want to read a translation, Live Text is enough; if you want to paste one, the capture saves a step. The translation help article has the details.

Verdict: stay free or pay

Start with Live Text. If you catch yourself taking screenshots only to select text in them, that’s the sign a capture app will pay off. Unpixel is a one-time purchase from $5.99 for one Mac, and it needs macOS 26 on Apple silicon. Our list of free ways to do OCR on a Mac covers what else you can try before buying anything.