Simon WillisonMar 30, 2024

I built a new tool: https://tools.simonwillison.net/ocr - it runs OCR against images and PDFs entirely in your browser (no file upload needed) using Tesseract.js and PDF.js

I wrote more about the tool and how I built it (with copious amounts of Claude 3 Opus and a little bit of ChatGPT) here: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Mar/30/ocr-pdfs-images/

OCR PDFs and images directly in your browser

Show threadPrem Kumar Aparanji 👶🤖🐘
@simon need more such browser-only, offline-first, privacy-first apps that don't require any installation or configuration!
Mar 30, 2024 at 6:31pmWeb
Show threadStuart GrayMar 30, 2024

@prem_k @simon If you didn't see it at the time, this was quite a cool offline browser-based transcription tool posted a few weeks back:

https://bne.social/@simon/112057608292224084

Like you, I love these kinds of tools but if I could *beg* the authors for one feature - please make it easy to download the needed files so I can run it all truly offline :)

Simon Elvery (@[email protected])

I wrote about scratching my own itch and building a transcription tool. It's completely private, neither the audio or the transcript ever leaves your browser. If this is the kind of tool you use, I'd love to hear your feedback (both on the write-up and the tool). https://elvery.net/drzax/cobbling-together-a-private-machine-transcription-and-editing-tool/

bne.social
Show threadSimon WillisonMar 30, 2024
@StuartGray @prem_k That really is a worthwhile feature for this one, I've opened an issue - no promises I'll solve it though, there are things in there relating to bundling that I don't know how to do yet https://github.com/simonw/tools/issues/2
Version of OCR that can run entirely offline · Issue #2 · simonw/tools

Currently https://tools.simonwillison.net/ocr loads assets from a CDN. A version that can run offline would be fantastic. It would be a tiny bit tricky to get versions of PDF.js and Tesseract.js (a...

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