Handwriting recognition free download - Decuma Alphabetic handwriting recognition, Calculator Touch - with Handwriting Recognition, Handwriting, and many more programs.

1. Best Handwriting Recognition Software For Mac Free
2. Best Handwriting Recognition Software For Mac Os X

OCR or Optical Character Recognition is a sophisticated software technique that allows a computer to extract text from images. In the early days OCR software was pretty rough and unreliable. Now, with the tons of computing power on tap, it’s often the fastest way to convert text in an image into something you can edit with a word processor.

These ten applications offer different takes on the task of OCR, without a price tag and across multiple platforms. If you’ve been looking for a way to turn pictures into words, you’ll almost certainly find the best free ocr software you need below.

FreeOCR (Windows 10)

FreeOCR is a basic free OCR software that offers all the core functionality you’d want from this type of software. For starters, if you have a TWAIN scanner (which is basically all of them) you can directly scan and extract text from paper. Image imports work as you’d expect as well. This includes multi-page documents in TIFF and PDF format as well.

FreeOCR uses an Open Source engine originally developed by Hewlett Packard and eventually released by Google for everyone to use. It’s known as “Tesseract”. Tesseract has some neat features, but one of the most interesting is its automatic layout detection system. This means you don’t need to spend time tediously drawing rectangles around discrete blocks of text.

SimpleOCR (Windows 10)

SimpleOCR is a basic OCR package that can convert typed documents into text, directly from your scanner. The name, SimpleOCR, is quite literal in this case. If you have documents that exhibit any form of complexity, such as columns or that don’t have perfectly crisp scans, SimpleOCR can’t get the job done.

Of course, Simple Software is happy to sell you a more sophisticated solution for a few bucks, but if you just want to OCR some standard blocks of text, this is one option that won’t cost you a penny and is as simple to use as the name suggests. As a bonus, it supports handwriting recognition!

Easy Screen OCR (Windows, Mac, iOS & Android)

Easy Screen OCR is a small, best free OCR software that relies on a cloud-based, Google-powered recognition engine. As you might expect, this means that you need to have an active internet connection for the software to work. If that’s not an issue, you’ll find quite a useful tool here.

This OCR application is intended to extract text from screenshots, letting you copy text from websites or any other text that’s on-screen. What’s particularly cool about this is the support for more than 100 languages. If you want to translate (for example) Japanese text, you can simply take a screenshot and have Easy Screen OCR do it for. If this is something you need to do often, it also helps that you have the option to set custom hotkeys.

While this is not a traditional OCR application, there are plenty of workflows around these days that involve extracting text from the images you’re working with. Easy Screen OCR makes that task as easy as a few keystrokes.

Unfortunately the latest version of the software (1.4.2 and up) requires a subscription fee after 20 uses. However, older versions of the software are still free to use.

Capture2Text (Windows 10)

Capture2Text is an interesting little application with a narrow, but very useful function. It’s used to OCR text from what’s currently on your screen. You press a hotkey, select the zone of the screen you want to OCR and then it sends the result directly to the clipboard, so you can paste it into a word processor.

Capture2Text is a portable application, so you don’t need to install it. Just run the executable and you can use it on any Windows system from version 7 and up. The software is Open Source as well, so you can copy and modify it as you like, as long as you comply with the terms of the GNU license.

It’s not fancy by any means, but if you want to rapidly grab text from images that you are handling, this is a great piece of software to do it.

A9t9 (Windows 10)

If you’ve never ventured onto the Windows Store, you may be surprised to find that there are actually plenty of free and Open Source applications there. The a9t9 app is just such a gem and comes with no strings attached at all. There are no adverts and it promises pretty robust OCR performance.

A9t9 supports quite a long list of languages, although not as extensive as some of the other options on this list. If you’re a Windows 8.1 (or up) user who needs OCR right now and don’t want to spend any money, then simply click a single button on the Windows Store app and seconds later a9t9 will be processing your images into documents you can edit.

Adobe Scan (Android & iOS)

Adobe has an absolute ton of mobile apps out in the wild. Some are pretty great, while many seem to be little more than experiments. Adobe Scan falls into the former category. It’s a polished camera scanning and OCR application that will run on either Android or iOS. There’s no charge and you don’t need to be subscribed to any Adobe services.

Of course, the final document is a PDF, which you can only directly edit with a paid version of Acrobat, but copying the text over to a word processor of your choice is no hassle, if we’re being honest.

One of the best features of the Adobe OCR software is its ability to recognize handwriting. Of course, good quality handwriting will be better recognized. Don’t expect it to decipher something you can’t read yourself. Like your doctor’s prescription notes.

There are a few other reasons to try out Adobe Scan. The ability to automatically scan, OCR and contacts from a business card is very cool. In fact, if you spend a lot of time meeting people, it could save you a heck of a lot of time.

The app also has, as you’d expect from the creators of PhotoShop, a small set of touch-up tools. So you can clean up the images before trying to extract text from them.

Office Lens (Android & iOS)

When the first phones with built-in digital cameras came to market the quality on offer was truly awful. The resulting images weren’t really useful for anything and you certainly couldn’t make out fine detail such as text.

Today, the sophisticated cameras found on even budget models offer high-resolution images that are good enough to use as a replacement for a document scanner. For example, the Google Drive app lets you make some pretty good scans using nothing but your phone camera.

The Office Lens app by Microsoft not only lets you scan documents, it allows you to OCR them on the fly. So you could take a snap of someone’s business card and immediately have the text ready to copy into your contacts list.

Office Lens is a standalone application, but its functionality is being built into other MS Office apps as well, so if you’re already using those it may not be necessary to download this independent app. Then again, sometimes a focused, lightweight app is exactly what the doctor ordered.

English OCR (iOS)

English OCR is a free OCR app for iPhone and iPad that makes it pretty easy to quickly take a snap of a document and convert the text in the photo into a digital format. It’s released under an Open Source licence, but the developers use adverts to help carry the costs of developing and supporting the application.

There is a paid “Pro” version that has exactly the same functionality as the free edition. The only difference is that the Pro version removes all adverts. So if you are OK with a few ads, you don’t need to put any money down at all.

Reading Between The Lines

The promise of a paperless world has, so far, failed to materialize. Which means OCR technology will remain an important part of the bridge between the digital and analogue worlds.

Armed with the OCR apps above, you should never have to laboriously retype a document ever again and, best of all, they won’t cost you a cent.

If you take notes by hand on your mobile device – either with your finger or a stylus – you know there's no substitute for a solid handwriting recognition app to make all your scribbles legible.

Handwriting recognition has been around for decades, starting with the PalmPilot and the Newton MessagePad from the 1990s. These popular PDAs recognized character input with a stylus. You had to write legibly for the Newton to recognize lettering, and you had to learn the Graffiti language for the Palm to do the same.

Many mobile apps let you draw letters, strokes and shapes onscreen with iOS and Android devices, but only a few recognize, translate or digitize that input.

The following apps can automatically recognize and digitize your handwriting. Some of the apps are free, some operate with integrated keyboards, while others have in-app purchases or fees, or rely on the MyScript AI handwriting recognition and digital ink management engine.

MetaMoJi Note ($7.99)

Credit: MetaMoji

This colorful notebook, sketchbook and scrapbook app supports voice input, PDF annotation and handwriting-to-text conversion with the Mazec helper app.

The app offers a large assortment of pens, calligraphy pens and inks, graphics, and layouts for writing and sketching. You can edit and tag voice memos to visuals or documents – or import a PDF file, mark it up and save it back out as a PDF. You can share notes via email, Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr, or store and share files with Google Drive, Evernote and Dropbox. You can sync all folders to the MetaMoJi Cloud, which saves and manages up to 2GB documents for free and password protect your notes.

A Gold Service for $29.99 per year, or $4.99 per month, gives you additional flexible features, including a shared drive for coediting documents, interval-based auto sync for backing up notes, more cloud storage, access to additional inks and papers, and the ability to customize the navigation bar.

Notes Plus ($9.99)

Credit: Notes Plus

Notes Plus is a gesture-based writing app for iPhone and iPad that supports more than 50 languages and delivers fluid handwriting capabilities, complete with ink effects, palm rejection, shape recognition and a close-up writing mode. The interface is stylish, fun, and responsive, with plenty of options to scale or move elements around the page – and it offers variable ink styles, colors, thicknesses, and writing implements.

Combined with the MyScript engine, Notes Plus translates your scribble into text, accepts text input and export notes as PDF or images to email, Dropbox, Google Drive and Evernote. You can import PDF and Word documents and insert images from the photos or camera app. Audio input lets you record notes. The app is compatible with styluses from Wacom, Adonit and Apple Pencil. A recent update supports the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil 2 and iOS 12.

Google Handwriting Input (free)

Credit: Google

Google Handwriting Input, an Android-only app, translates your scribbles directly onscreen as you write. Upon installing the app, you get a few setup panes where you can choose your language and an optional keyboard, which lets you use the utility with other text input apps. In addition to supporting over 100 languages, it allows easy input of ideographic lettering and voice, and recognizes emoji-style drawings.

This app understands the sloppiest scrawl quite well and offers predictive text at the top of the window to let you tweak its interpretation – or you can correct spelling directly on the text output.

An online feature sends information to Google to decipher your handwriting to improve the recognition engine, but you can opt out of this in favor of more private local device translation. While there is no specific iOS version, you can enable Google Handwrite in mobile Safari or Chrome to search with finger or stylus.

MyScript Nebo ($7.99)

Credit: MyScript

MyScript Nebo is specifically designed to use with the Apple iPad Pro and Pencil or the latest versions of Android with an active stylus, like S Pen or a Wacom pen.

The app is now compatible with the iPad Pro 2018 and the second-generation Apple Pencil. Nebo uses its interactive ink tech to facilitate writing, drawing and formatting notes in addition to converting text into shareable documents.

New updates facilitate better performance with math objects as well as overall improvements to note management. A new library lets you view notebooks and collections in a side panel, which allows for rearranging documents via drag and drop. An enhanced search engine covers your whole library.

In addition to editing and formatting in 65 languages, you can sketch; annotate images; create editable equations; adjust type size and device orientation; organize notes in pages, notebooks, and folders; and search, store, or sync with Dropbox. You can export documents as text, Word, PDF or HTML. You can also copy, paste and edit diagrams to PowerPoint.

WritePad for iPad ($4.99)

Credit: WritePad

If you prefer to write longhand but need to see your text in digital format, consider WritePad for iPad. You can configure a host of options to recognize input forms and predefined commands, or you can input lettering with your finger or a stylus.

When you're done with a word, the app automatically converts your scrawl to text. The app learns your writing style to reduce mistakes. Gestures let you select, cut, copy, paste and insert special characters. Four recognition modes let you enter cursive, print, numeric text for phone numbers and internet language for email addresses and URLs. Updates include a new invert toolbar colors option and better integration with the file manager. It is now optimized for iOS 12 and the third generation iPad Pro.

The Android or iOS app supports a dozen languages and can translate back and forth between them. It also has a spell checker with a custom dictionary, a context analyzer, auto-corrector, and a shorthand editor that accepts frequently used words and phrases. It syncs with Evernote, Box, Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive and iTunes. You can even tweet or post Facebook updates directly from the app.

Mazec ($12.99)

Credit: Mazec

Mazec is a keyboard app that provides handwriting conversion to text in a variety of apps like email, notes and social posts. Semantic databases, combined with the MyScript engine, let you search, browse the web and complete online forms. You can choose font size, auto-scroll area width, word spacing and more. Updates improve the built-in dictionaries and streamline Apple Pencil usability.

As you begin to write, Mazec displays predictive suggestions and phrases to choose from so you usually don't have to write out an entire word before the app completes it. Mazec intelligently detects your choices, learns specific phrases and even offers emojis – if you write 'emoji' or a recognized emoji category name. Mazec supports 12 languages, but you must buy a language pack if you want to use any other than the one you signed in with. It works on Android or iOS.

GoodNotes 5 ($7.99)

Credit: GoodNotes

If you seek a powerful note-taking and PDF annotation app with handwriting recognition, check out the updated GoodNotes 5 for searchable notebook and document creation.

The app's pen tool offers a choice of letter colors and thicknesses. Shape recognition automatically creates recognizable shapes from freehand drawings. Work with text boxes and images and move items around as well as zoom, scroll and turn pages.

Version 5 adds features like horizontal and vertical flexible scrolling, the ability to create an unlimited number of folders and subfolders, and search capabilities via handwritten notes, typed text or document and folder titles. The new version also features shortcuts to various pages, documents, or folders; a QuickNotes feature that gets your notes started quickly; and an option to display documents as lists.

Best Handwriting Recognition Software For Mac Free

An improved ink algorithm eases the writing experience. Updated brush pen and shape tools offer more colorful and creative notes while a new template library offers distinctive covers and pages. GoodNotes now supports the new iPad Pro and the second-generation Apple Pencil. With iCloud, you can sync your notebooks across all your iOS devices.

Pen to Print (free)

Credit: Serendi LTD

In a variation on the handwriting recognition concept, Pen to Print reads scanned handwritten documents and converts them into editable, searchable digital text that can be stored on your device or within a cloud service.

Best Handwriting Recognition Software For Mac Os X

The app's handwriting OCR (optical character recognition) engine extracts text from paper documents, like letters, school notes, meeting notes, and grocery lists, allowing those who prefer to write in longhand the freedom to continue.

The handwriting recognition system works with block letters, cursive and script.

A premium monthly and yearly subscription plans let you save your text to a file, copy, email, add to Notes, or share on Message, WhatsApp, Hangout, WeChat, Messenger, and Telegram. You can transfer the text to word processors like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, or export to Evernote, OneNote or Google Keep. The app works with iOS 9 or later and Android 4.4 and later in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.