Textify - Text recognition (OCR) made easy and accurate #1 Product of the Day PH

[yellow8]

I just released Textify 1.2:

• Fixes the filter quality issues on imported PDFs (no issue with images)
• Adds keyboard shortcuts for the different actions available

It has already been accepted by Apple review team, thus it should be available to you very soon.
Textify on the Mac App Store

 

[MacBH928]

hmmm...interesting. I thought OCR is an extremely advanced technology, can't be free. Are you using a 3rd party solution like Google or something?

Love your enthusiasm though, I wish I had it.

 

[yellow8]

It is actually a mix between a framework and a homemade implementation. No 3rd party involved, no server, the app works 100% offline, on device.
I'm not a big fan (and that's a gentle word) of data collection, so I see no reason to do that within my own apps.

 

[yellow8]

I just released Textify 1.4

It fixes a bug where pages could be out of order with multi-pages TXT export. I don't know how I could let this one slip into my apps...

Here is the link to the store: Textify on the Mac App Store
It's still free for TXT export.
There is still a 70% discount for the PRO version for PDF export with text integrated without watermark.

PS: _mj, still trying to beat Acrobat for file size, on-going work

 

[peripatetic]

Does Textify use tesseract as the OCR engine or is it something else?

 

[yellow8]

It is not tesseract. I'm using something else, customized by myself.

 

[yellow8]

Spoiler alert

I sent Textify v2 for review to Apple. It's ready for macOS Big Sur, with very nice new things.
Textify on the Mac App Store

 

[yellow8]

Hum, when I posted my previous message, I thought the release of macOS Big Sur was imminent.
Anyway, Textify v2 is ready and waiting for this new macOS version .

 

[yellow8]

That's it, finally! With the new macOS Release Candidate, Apple lets us submit apps compatible with macOS Big Sur.

Textify v2 is now available on the Mac App Store:

• OCR (text recognition) support for 8 languages (+7)
• OCR quality has been improved: try it, results are awesome!
• New "copy text" button to quickly have the recognized text at disposal
• Compatible with macOS Big Sur
• New App Icon following macOS Big Sur new interface guidelines (see below)
• The app has been translated into French & German

➡️ Textify on the Mac App Store

Hope you like it!
Oh, and I already have ideas to make it even better! .

 

[neutrino23]

Sounds great. I’m still using 10.14. I will upgrade to Big Sur when it comes out. My scanned text has lots of math equations. Any idea how this will be handled? Things like integral signs, subscripts, superscripts, Greek characters, summation signs, etc.

 

[yellow8]

This should work (considering they are not handwritten), but you might end up with some mistakes making the equations incorrect.

 

[yellow8]

Quick status update: Textify now supports Apple Silicon macs, natively. Should work like a charm .

 

[yellow8]

Quick status update: I just released a quick fix for Textify. It fixes a rare bug causing the PDF export to hang.
That rare bug is now history .

Oh, and don't forget: I love your feedback, it gives me ideas and motivation for improving the app! Thanks guys!

 

[mj_]

@yellow8, are you at any point in the (distant) future planning to incorporate a scanning feature into textify? Maybe even as a paid upgrade/feature?

Ideally, I would be looking into something that allows for fake duplex scanning (aka scan front sides first, then scan reverse sides, then reorganize automatically from 1-2-3-4 to 1-3-2-4). PDFScanner Pro offers that feature but its OCR capabilties are abysmal (and that is quite frankly an understatement). Your OCR is in turn fantastic but using your software is quite arduous to be honest since I first have to launch Preview (or some other application such as PDFScanner Pro) to scan the documents in question and save them on my desktop, and then have to load them into Textify manually in order to perform OCR.

 

[yellow8]

Hi @mj_, the answer to your question is quite complex.
Basically, the answer would be yes, I would love to!
The question is: when? I don't know, my planning is very busy for December, so I suppose it means you will not see this feature during the next month.

 

[yellow8]

A lot of work under the hood for Textify 2.3:

• Improved memory efficiency
• Improved performance
• Improved overall efficiency (less power consumption through more efficient algorithms, ...)

➡️ Textify 2.3 on the Mac App Store
(of course, still absolutely no data collection within my apps. Everything happens on your device, privately)

 

[yellow8]

Hello guys,

a nice new functionality in Textify 2.4:

• You can now draw rectangles on the input image to define OCR-zones. Textify will then only recognize the text inside the zones. This greatly improves the OCR process with very complicated layouts (like columns), and ensures the output text is exactly as you want

➡️ Textify 2.4 on the Mac App Store

... oh and guess what! I'm on a dev-spree (hello UT's fans) and already working on 2 awesome new features which will probably make the app deserve it's 3.0 badge

 

[mj_]

Is there a possibility to add "open with" functionality? Right now I have to launch Textify, than drag a PDF into the window. It'd be easier in some cases to right-click a PDF and select open with - Textify. This would, among other things, also allow us to integrate Textify into workflows.

 

[yellow8]

I'll certainly see what I can do about that!

 

[rpmurray]

This would be a great app if it ran in macOS 10.13.x or later. It's very limited by only working in Crapalina and Big Suck and a no-go for me. There's a guy who wrote PDFZone (great app, by the way) that still works with 10.13. It's too bad the developer of this app can't do the same.

 

[jlc1978]

This would be a great app if it ran in macOS 10.13.x or later. It's very limited by only working in Crapalina and Big Suck and a no-go for me. There's a guy who wrote PDFZone (great app, by the way) that still works with 10.13. It's too bad the developer of this app can't do the same.

Considering 70%+ of Mac users are on 10.14 or above it makes sense to focus on them and not try to make an app backwards compatible.

 

[yellow8]

This would be a great app if it ran in macOS 10.13.x or later. It's very limited by only working in Crapalina and Big Suck and a no-go for me. There's a guy who wrote PDFZone (great app, by the way) that still works with 10.13. It's too bad the developer of this app can't do the same.

Sounds like a great dev!
I'd love to make it backwards compatible, but some of the API I use are not. My hands are tied here, sorry .

 

[rpmurray]

Sounds like a great dev!
I'd love to make it backwards compatible, but some of the API I use are not. My hands are tied here, sorry .

Ah. I think what threw me off were these two quotes, "It is actually a mix between a framework and a homemade implementation" and "It is not tesseract. I'm using something else, customized by myself". It made me think you were doing this with custom code and not tied too much to other APIs. I'm currently on an iMac 2011 that can't move past High Sierra, so the reason for my disappointment.

 

[yellow8]

Is there a possibility to add "open with" functionality? Right now I have to launch Textify, than drag a PDF into the window. It'd be easier in some cases to right-click a PDF and select open with - Textify. This would, among other things, also allow us to integrate Textify into workflows.

Hey, good news, I can confirm it will be included in the next version. I just implemented this (among other things, next update will be BIG).
FYI, in case you didn't know, you can also use copy (cmd+C) & paste (cmd+V) to add images/PDFs into Textify.

 

[mj_]

Wonderful, thank you! Copy & paste won't help with my scan-to-file workflow with OCR but thanks nevertheless.