a trex alternative

what a trex alternative has to admit first

it is free, and it is open

most comparison pages in this section have an easy argument: the other app costs money and this one does not. that argument does not exist here. TRex is MIT licensed with its source in the open, installs with one Homebrew command, and asks for nothing. the build in the Mac App Store is a paid convenience, not a paywall — the same app comes off GitHub free. checked on 10 september 2026.

the licence, the feature list and the install command are all in the project's own readme: amebalabs/TRex on GitHub

and the recognition is identical

the second argument comparison pages tend to make quietly: neither app recognises text better than the other. both call Vision, Apple's own recognition framework, on your Mac and offline — it is a dozen lines of Swift away from any terminal on macOS. every app in this category, ours and theirs and the paid ones, returns the same characters from the same rectangle.

so if you came to find out whose reading is more accurate, the question does not apply. what follows is what is left after admitting both of those.

the framework both of them call, and what it takes to call it yourself: VNRecognizeTextRequest in Apple's developer documentation

the long version of what the recognition module does and where it stops: text recognition for Mac

what macOS reads before you look for a trex alternative

Live Text, and what it already covers

Live Text is built in and costs nothing. point at text in a photo in Photos or Preview, control-click, copy. it handles a paused video too, in Safari, Photos, QuickTime and Quick Look — true since Ventura, so any page still selling «we can even do video» is describing a gap that closed years ago.

for a screenshot someone sent you, that is the end of the question. try it before you install anything at all.

Apple's own instructions for it, including the control-click menu: use Live Text to interact with text in a photo on Mac

where it runs out is reach, not video

Live Text lives where Apple put it. a video playing in Chrome or Firefox is not it. VLC is not it. another app's window, or a slide in a screen share on a call, is not it either — those are not Apple's frames.

that is the whole reason TRex and this module exist: they read pixels wherever the pixels are, instead of waiting for the app underneath to cooperate.

the operation on its own, if a video is the case you actually have: copy text from a video

qr codes are a separate habit and both apps cover them: scan a qr code on Mac

so which trex alternative do you actually need

if the picture is already open in Photos or Preview, you need nothing — Live Text does it. if you want a hotkey for any rectangle of the screen and you want to drive it from scripts, TRex is the better answer and it is free.

the case for hop starts elsewhere: not at what the recognition does, but at how many apps you run to get it and where the result lands afterwards.

how hop works as a trex alternative

a window before the clipboard, not after

frame a piece of the screen, or paste a picture into the window with ⌘V, and the reading appears where you can look at it: read it, fix the stray character, then copy. TRex puts the text on the clipboard the moment the rectangle closes, which is faster and is the point of it — but a misread digit in an order number is something you find out later.

line breaks are kept, so a table stays a table and a code snippet stays runnable rather than arriving as one ribbon of words.

qr codes and barcodes come out of the same pass, and a code holding a web address gets an «open link» button. web addresses only: a scanned code is untrusted input, so a phone number or a Wi-Fi password stays plain text.

the part that is not about recognition at all

every reading also lands in the clipboard history in the same panel, next to everything else you copied today. that is the difference that survives a week of use — the grab itself is over in a second either way, but redoing it because the text scrolled out of your clipboard is not.

and the same icon holds seventeen more tools — a colour picker, archives, window layouts, a system monitor, a converter, a timer. if you were about to install a text grabber, a clipboard manager and a colour picker, this is one download instead of three, and one set of permissions instead of three.

that is the entire argument. if it does not describe you, TRex is the right app and you can stop reading here.

the history the readings land in, if that is one of the icons you were counting: clipboard history for Mac

the same module argued against a paid grabber rather than a free one: a TextSniper alternative

where TRex is better than hop

it is scriptable and we are not

TRex ships a command line tool, runs Shortcuts actions, answers a url scheme and has ready workflows for Alfred and Raycast. if a grab is a step inside something bigger — file a receipt, fill a form, push a string into a script — that is a real capability and there is nothing like it here. hop's recognition is a panel and a hotkey, and it stays that.

it also lets you pin the recognition language and keep your own word list, which matters if you read the same jargon every day. ours takes the language list from the system and offers no dictionary of your own.

it is smaller, older and reaches further back

one app, one shortcut, nothing else in it — if what you want is the smallest possible thing on your Mac, that is a real argument and it is theirs. eighteen tools is the opposite of that by design.

it runs on macOS Big Sur, four releases earlier than we do, and it installs with `brew install --cask trex`. on an older Mac that is not a preference, it is the whole decision.

this page does not enumerate TRex's limits beyond what its own readme states: we have not run it long enough to. the table covers our side of it; check theirs against your own list.

the honest way to decide

1. try Live Text first on a picture that is already open — no install, and for many people that ends it
2. count the small single-purpose apps left in your menu bar
3. if the answer is one, or you drive the grab from scripts, keep TRex — there is nothing to gain here
4. if it is six, download hop (about 6 mb, macOS 14 or later, no account) and see how many it covers
5. grab a paused video in Chrome, then a table, and check the line breaks came through
6. keep whichever leaves you with fewer icons and the same capability

the same argument in a different module, if you want to see whether it holds twice: a Rectangle alternative

frequently asked questions

both are free — what is the point of switching?

not the recognition. one menu bar icon instead of several, and readings that land in a clipboard history rather than in the clipboard alone. if grabbing text is all you use, there is no point, and TRex is smaller.

does one of them recognise text better?

no. both use Vision, Apple's own recognition running on your Mac, so the same rectangle returns the same characters. there is no accuracy difference to find between apps in this category.

does TRex read qr codes?

yes — qr codes and barcodes, and it opens a link found inside one. so does hop, in the same pass as the text. this is not a difference between them.

can it read a paused video?

yes, and so can Live Text since Ventura in Safari, Photos, QuickTime and Quick Look. the gap is elsewhere: video in Chrome or Firefox, VLC, another app's window, a screen share.

does it work offline?

yes. recognition runs on your Mac on Apple's own engine — nothing is uploaded, by either app.

does it keep line breaks?

yes. a table stays a table and a code snippet stays usable instead of arriving as one long line.

can i run it from a script or a Shortcut?

no. TRex can — it has a cli tool, Shortcuts actions and a url scheme. if that is how you use a text grabber, stay there.

is hop open source too?

yes, MIT licensed, source on GitHub, no paid tier. same licence TRex uses.

the hop side of this

text recognition — pull text off anything on screen — a video in Chrome or VLC, a locked pdf, another app's window.