Google Chrome 76 on Android and Windows 10 actually can now copy and extract text from images using TextDetector in Shape Detection API enabled in Chrome browser.
Chromium team is working to add Shape Detection API to detect faces, bar codes and QR Codes in images. To retrieve text from images in Chrome browser, lead for Chrome Dev Rel, Paul Kinlan created a demo app by using two new web platform features -Share Target Level 2 and TextDetector in the Shape Detection API. Currently, Chrome Canary 76 on Android and Windows 10 support these APIs as demo worked for us on these platforms.
For the uninitiated, Shape Detection API is a combination of three APIs: BarCodeDetector, FaceDetector, and TextDetector. According to Chrome Status Page, TextDetector requires Android Device with support for Play libraries installed, macOS 10.11+ and Windows 10.
Extract text from an image by using Shape Detection API in Chrome
1. Ensure you’re using Chrome 76 Canary on Android or Windows
2. Visit chrome://flags
3. Search for “Experimental Web Platform features”
4. Select “Enabled” and restart the browser.
5. Now go to copy-image-text.glitch.me, browse an image from the computer having some text to test and submit
The app copies and shows the extracted text, it worked for us.
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