Find screenshots by their text

For Hangrail 0.32.4. The steps below use macOS, with Windows search shortcuts and recognition requirements noted separately.

On this page

If you remember “next Wednesday” from a screenshot but not its filename, search for those words in Hangrail. Hangrail indexes text in images it has collected and returns matching image cards.

Get the image into Hangrail first

On Mac, take a screenshot directly, or enable automatic collection and save new screenshots to the folder selected in Settings. Drag existing images from Finder; copied images are saved when clipboard collection is active.

Automatic collection does not import the entire screenshot folder from before startup. If an older screenshot is not in Hangrail, drag in the image you need and wait for recognition.

Search screenshot text on Mac

Open Hangrail and click the magnifying glass or press ⌘F.
Enter a few clearly visible words from the image, such as “next Wednesday”. This is an example; use words from your own image.
Wait for background recognition to finish. Results update automatically. Building an index for existing images for the first time can take a while.
Select a matching image and press Space to preview it and confirm it is the screenshot you need.

Search matches titles, text, file paths and image text together. Filter by content type to see images only, or narrow the search within an existing group or source.

The corresponding steps on Windows

On Windows, press Ctrl+F in the shelf, enter words from the image and wait for background recognition. Use the installed version with the Windows OCR components for the language you need. If a portable build lacks package identity, follow the app’s installation instructions.

Recognition engines and language requirements differ by platform. On Mac, Hangrail uses system Vision recognition configured for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and English. The website’s five interface languages do not imply equal OCR support for all of them.

Why image text might not be found

The image is not in Hangrail yet, or background recognition has not finished.
The current group, source or content-type filter excludes the image. Remove unnecessary conditions and try again.
The text is too small, blurred, obscured or unsupported by the current system recognition setup. Try a short, clearly visible phrase.
If recognition fails, check the progress or retry control in the toolbar. No text found and recognition failure are different outcomes; waiting alone cannot fix every failure.

This search covers text in collected images. It does not scan every file on your computer or create a full-text index for every PDF or video.

Reuse the original image after finding it

The image text index helps you find content. Copying or dragging a card still delivers the original image; it does not automatically turn it into recognized text.

For copied text, see the clipboard history tutorial. To deliver screenshots and documents to another app together, see the file transfer tutorial.