TextSniper for Mac. Is it worth $6.99?
No matter how great of an operating system you own, it won’t be feasible to use if there are no good utility and productivity applications on it.
Many of us come across capturing a text on their screen. When the text is formatted properly on a webpage or an article, you can simply drag your cursor on top of it and select it.
However, that is not always the case, sometimes what you want exists on an image or a file where the text is not selectable. In those situations TextSniper comes to your rescue.
TextSniper allows you to capture any text written in several languages and copy them into your clipboard. From there, you can use several features of the application which I’ll explain below.
The What
TextSniper is basically a utility where it utilizes a shortcut to recognize what is on your screen. In my opinion, an outstanding use case for this application would be of an engineer who wants to capture a text from a virtual machine running on their Mac. The use cases extends far beyond what we understand.
The simplicity of pushing a few keys and accomplishing a task where it would normally take one a long time to write is astonishing in TextSniper.
Some Cool Features
TextSniper is packed with amazing features, some are:
- Privacy: it is fantastic because it does not collect any data
- Runs offline: it doesn’t need an internet connection
- Makes use of advance OCR to recognize more than 7 languages
- Can speak the text that was recognized
- Utilizes the M1 processor which means great performance and low impact on RAM and battery
- Barcode and QR code recognition
The Help for Writing Poems
From time to time, I get emotional and feel like the only way to feel satisfied is writing a poem. I think about my missed opportunities in love, life’s chances so, the only way I could feel better is to write. I browse Pinterest and look at beautiful sentences, inspiring images, quotes, and love messages — they help me get inspired on my next writing. Many times, the website which hosts those images, don’t write the content in a textual format that would be selectable.
For this use case of mine, the TextSniper is fantastic. I simply click and drag the area surrounding the text, then it immediately goes to my clipboard where I could paste that text in any text editor of my choice which typically will be Ulysses.
The problem with it though is the recognition of certain characters in a poem. Let me explain more: Sometimes in a poem, the text has multiple white space in between, sometimes there are multiple m-dashes, that is when the application can’t properly recognize the characters and the text.
It does the job, but recognition for this use case is not 100%.
Here is an example of what I am talking about:
Nevertheless, it does 80% of what I want, and I love it for that.
The Users
The important aspect of reviewing any application is finding out who it is made for. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find out who really this application is made for. I can think of plenty use cases for engineers and writers, but It would have given me a great deal of knowledge if the developer specifically mentioned who would benefit from such utility.
The Success
The future is not vague to me regarding the potential of this application. I believe people are going to enjoy using it, and it is one fantastic piece of utility, however, I feel like there is a need for explaining the research behind TextSniper, and understand the “Why” behind developing it.
TextSniper seems to be in its early development stages, and I believe the future is bright for it. The number of features it could add is plenty, yet, the developer has to be super careful on implementing them correctly.
That means doing a lot of research, finding out the problems, and how exactly could the new features solve problems for the people.
Conclusion & Acknowledgement
So, is it worth $6.99? Absolutely! Seeing how TextSniper is frequently updated, and considering how talented the developer is, makes me certain that I made a good purchase.
You can purchase the app using this link.
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