Documentation

Everything you need to get the most out of Textquill — the free, private, offline OCR extension.

Getting started

Once Textquill is published, add it from the Chrome Web Store and you're ready to go — there's no account to create and nothing to configure.

  1. Install the extension from the Chrome Web Store.
  2. Click the puzzle-piece Extensions icon in the Chrome toolbar, then pin Textquill so its icon is always visible.
  3. Click the Textquill icon (or right-click any image) to start extracting text.

English recognition and both quality modes are bundled with the extension, so you can start working immediately — even completely offline.

Ways to capture

Textquill gives you many ways to feed it an image. Use whichever fits the moment.

Right-click an image

Right-click any picture on a web page and choose Extract text from the context menu.

Select a screen area

Press Alt+Shift+S (or launch it from the toolbar) and drag a box over any region of the page to capture and recognize just that area.

Capture the visible tab

Grab a screenshot of everything currently on screen in the active tab and extract its text.

Full-page capture

Capture a long, scrolling page top to bottom and pull the text from the whole thing.

Upload, drag & drop, or paste

Open the extension and upload an image file, drag one in, or paste an image straight from your clipboard.

Image URL or base64

Paste an image URL or a base64 data URI and Textquill will load and process it locally.

Recognition modes

Textquill offers three settings:

  • Auto (recommended) — picks the best mode for each image automatically. Leave it here unless you have a reason not to.
  • Fast — optimized for speed on clean, high-contrast text like screenshots and documents.
  • Accurate — best for photos and scene text, or anything with unusual fonts, angles, or backgrounds.

Not sure which to use? Keep it on Auto. It reads the image and chooses Fast or Accurate for you.

Languages

Textquill recognizes 16 languages: English plus 15 more.

  • Chinese, Hindi, Nepali, Japanese, Korean, Arabic
  • French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian
  • Thai, Vietnamese, Turkish

English works fully offline out of the box. When you select an extra language for the first time, its data file downloads once and is cached locally — after that it works offline too.

QR & barcodes

If an image contains a QR code or barcode, Textquill decodes it automatically and shows the value alongside any recognized text — no separate scanner needed.

Read aloud

Any extracted text can be read back to you with built-in text-to-speech. Handy for proofreading, accessibility, or listening to a passage while you do something else.

History & export

Every extraction is saved to a local history on your device so you never lose a result.

  • Search — full-text search across everything you've scanned.
  • Favorites — star the results you'll want to find again.
  • Export — copy to clipboard, or export as a TXT or Markdown file.

History lives only on your device. Clear individual entries or the whole history at any time; uninstalling the extension removes it entirely.

Privacy

Textquill does not collect, upload, or sell your data. All recognition happens locally in your browser, and your images never leave your device. See the full privacy policy for details.

FAQ

Is it free?

Yes — free, forever. No paid tier, no trial.

Does it upload my images?

No. Everything runs locally on your device; images are never sent to us or any third party.

Does it work offline?

Yes. English and both quality modes are bundled, so they work with no network at all. Other languages download once, then work offline too.

Does it handle handwriting?

Best-effort. Printed text is most reliable; neat handwriting can work, but results vary.

Which browsers are supported?

Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers running Manifest V3.