It’s no secret that Apple’s Mac is the king of computers. (And it’s no secret that we are huge fans, being that we developed a Mac-centric app and everything.)
Maybe that’s why, according to Statista, 5.3 million Mac computers were sold worldwide between July and September 2018 (yes, just in a three month span).
The geniuses behind Apple’s technology continue to lead the way in innovation, efficiency, and clean design. And the Mac is a powerful machine, capable of much more than the average user would even realize.
Apr 10, 2020 4. Leadtools Ocr App. LEADTOOLS OCR App is without the best OCR Software for Mac Users. It is a free application to perform optical character acknowledgment on pictures. The OCR App by LEADTOOLS is created by LEAD Technologies, Inc. For Mac OS X 10.10 or later. It can separate content from pictures and convert pictures to different record designs. Mar 06, 2020 9. Power PDF Standard. Power PDF Standard touts itself as a more efficient choice for Mac users than other standard “freemium” PDF editors available. This app has been designed to help maximize productivity when converting, editing, creating, or sharing documents across any platform. You can collaborate with powerful markup and commenting.
That’s kind of the beauty of the Mac—it’s able to keep things uncomplicated and uncluttered for the laymen, but dig in deeper and there is a whole other dimension of proficiencies that a user can spend endless time trying to discover and remember.
In some more tech-savvy groups, mastering the Mac’s shortcuts and stretching its legs is a badge of honor, earning you the unofficial title of “Mac power user.”
Are you interested in joining the ranks of Mac’s most resourceful users? We can help get you there, but you’re going to have to put in some work, too.
One Step at a Time
Before you can run, you need to learn to walk, right? The same goes with ramping up your Mac skills.
If you happen to be new to the wondrous world of the Apple Mac (welcome!), or just have been more of a passive or restricted user in the past, it’s a good idea to get the basics of the device down pat.
First, you need to identify your own personal needs and what apps or programs you’ll be using the most. This will help narrow down your areas to focus on so you don’t become overwhelmed with information.
We are firm believers in exploring user guides, even if they feel daunting or text-heavy. Luckily, our friends over at 9to5Mac show you how you can access or download Apple’s official user guides. You can check it out here.
Do Your Research
Trust us, becoming a Mac power user is not something you want to attempt to achieve using the good old trial and error method. After all, you’re dealing with a very intelligent machine and you wouldn’t want to inadvertently do something you can’t undo—especially if you’re not sure what you even did in the first place!
Instead, it’s wise to look into different websites, blogs, and even podcasts dedicated to the topic as you start to wade into the Mac power user pond.
It’s important to note that you likely can’t do one major cram session and emerge a Mac power user. Rather, it’s an ongoing education that expands and shifts depending on the particular apps you are using and as iOS versions are updated.
Listen
The Mac Power Users Podcast by Relay FM has been helping Mac users get the most out of their machines since 2009. Self-proclaimed geeks Katie Floyd and lawyer David Sparks have been leading the charge for nearly a decade, with Stephen Hackett now filling Katie’s Apple-savvy shoes since the beginning of the year.
This weekly show provides expert tips, workflows for various tools, productivity hacks, and details on all devices—yes, your iPhone and iPad, too.
They even have a very engaged following that is vocal on the show’s message boards and social media. You might find helpful commentary exploring those pages a bit as well, so they basically provide a support group for macOS users.
Ready to take an audio deep dive into Mac Power Users? Listen to the podcast’s more than 460 episodes by clicking here.
Watch
Speaking of David Sparks, he’s also put his expert knowledge into a visual aide (digitally, of course) for you to consume at your own rate.
He and Brett Terpstra released two volumes of an eBook, 60 Mac Tips, which include hours of screencasts, videos, and commentary to help you learn the tricks of the Mac trade.
According to David’s site, the second volume includes “tips on macOS, Siri for the Mac, using the keyboard, Spotlight, Automator, Safari, Mail, Apple Notes, Apple Photos, Terminal Tips, and third-party apps. After reading and watching these tips and tricks, you’ll be more efficient on your Mac than ever.”
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You can grab both volumes of the book either through iBooks or by downloading via Vimeo (which also includes closed captioning in you need to watch on mute). Just be aware that this route will cost you a little—each book rings in around $20. However, that’s a small price to pay to the Mac gods to be able to be as efficient and effective as possible on your device.
Read
When all else fails, reading is still a useful learning tool.
There are endless websites, blog writers, and guides to help you navigate the worlds of Mac and iOS—you only need to type your desired terms into your Google search bar to see the plethora of resources at your fingertips.
Another great tool on the World Wide Web is Reddit, the U.S.-based website that is half social news aggregation, half user discussions. As the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet,” Reddit’s millions of sub-communities are broken down into separate post threads, which users can upvote or downvote depending on relevancy, helping to allow the top posts to rise to the top.
Source: www.reddit.com
There are a number of Mac and iOS channels to browse on Reddit, and they can be very useful places to pose questions when you’re looking for honest and timely answers.
In the Mac community (r/mac) on Reddit, a person asking for power user tips was met with this top-rated post: “IMO the biggest thing is the same regardless of the OS you use. Learn the keyboard shortcuts for the programs you use. Tapping a key is always faster than navigating with a mouse. Doing this is probably the biggest productivity increaser.”
This is the first lesson in being a Mac power user: the mastering of keyboard shortcuts. Click To TweetTiming
As a Mac-power-user-in-training, we have to assume that you know how critical it is to your productivity to always track your time!
How can you squeeze the most out of the powerful machine without squeezing the most out of yourself? If you thrive on being efficient and intentional, then you need to look at where you’re spending your time and the websites/apps/activities that may be holding you up.
That’s why Timing makes tracking on your Mac easy and automatic, and allows you to set your own organizational system and rules to fit your needs and desires.
Obviously we make it our goal to know everything there is to know about the Mac and iOS updates, and we work hard to adapt Timing to encompass and collaborate with all of Apple’s new features and enhancements.
In fact, we even offer guidance for Mac power users on how to optimize the Timing experience. Everything you need is laid out on this page: Timing for Power Users.
Final Thoughts
We commend you for working to become a Mac power user! We’re here to support you at every step.
Our advice is to not get frustrated if you feel like you can’t memorize all the shortcuts and tricks that macOS has to offer—we’d be shocked if you could! Simply start listening, watching, and reading everything you can and then put what you learn into action as you go about your daily Mac activities.
As with everything, practice makes perfect, and the more you implement these hacks into your life, the more they will become second nature.
I still prefer to write my information and findings on a paper. Now the deal is, these paper notes keep piling up and I have nowhere to stock them. OCR apps are one way of getting rid of these huge piles of paper. In case you are unaware, OCR apps convert your handwritten documents or scanned documents to editable text files. Most of the OCR apps work well with scanned documents. But there are extremely few OCR apps which handles handwritten texts gracefully.
Now, if you are in the same scenario, it’s hard to identify which OCR app is the best. So, here is a list of 5 best free OCR apps for Windows.
Read: Best OCR Software For Big Documents – 2018
How does OCR Apps Work?
OCR (short for Optical Character Recognition) Apps work flawlessly with scanned documents or printed documents. Suppose if there are two lines, both vertical and meeting at the top. And, you have another horizontal line between them. It’s easy to determine for the app that the alphabet is “A”. It determines the angle of the lines, crossovers, and stuff.
Now, the apps apply the same logic for handwritten text. But, handwritten texts are quite different from typed fonts as every person has a different style of writing the alphabet “A”. For this article, I am using a standard image of handwritten text as well as a screenshot of Minutes of a Meeting. These will be my test sample for all OCR apps. We can further judge the apps on conversion speed and accuracy.
Mac Power Users Ocr Apps
Best Free OCR Software For Windows 10
1. One Note
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Windows has inbuilt Microsoft One Note for Note Taking. However, One Note has an additional feature which works as OCR. All you have to do is copy and paste the picture or scanned documents on to the Note. Now, give it a couple of minutes to process the Image. Eventually, when you right click on the image, you will get an option called “Copy Text From Picture”.
In case you don’t get the option of “Copy Text From Picture”, wait for a while. One Note is still processing the Image and converting it to text. Even after a while, if you don’t get the option, then One Note wasn’t able to process the Image. You could wait for some more time or retry by pasting the image again. This happened to me while trying to convert Handwritten Notes to Text. I had to wait around 10 minutes for the option to pop up.
Verdict: One Note can effortlessly convert scanned or printed documents but it fails when dealing with handwritten texts. It wasn’t able to convert my handwritten sample Image to Text. The output Copy Text were some junk words which I couldn’t understand. Let’s just say, it was highly inaccurate. But, on the other side with the Minutes of the Meeting, it was perfectly accurate.
Pros:
- Free
- Accurate for PDFs
Cons:
- Time Consuming
- Doesn’t work for Handwritten or cursive text
2. Google Drive
Google Drive provides the easiest way to convert your documents to editable text. While Google Keep also has an OCR feature which is good with lists and business cards but you don’t get the Google Doc support. So, we will stick to the Google Drive OCR feature here. This would be the most convenient way, all you have to do is “Upload the Image to Google Drive”. After that, just right click on it, navigate to Open with and click on Google Docs. Now, depending on the file size and complexity Google Docs will convert the Image to Text.
The conversion of printed documents works better than Handwritten text. For some reason, Handwritten text seems to have weird formatting and text size. You can change that by clearing formatting for all the text after the conversion.
The only catch with Google Drive OCR Conversion is that it comes with a lot of restrictions. The uploaded image or document cannot be more than 2 MB in size. The document must be right-side up and you need to change the orientation if it’s not. This clearly means you cannot convert huge PDF’s or your entire handwritten library.
Verdict: With my image sample, Google was able to convert the sample accurately to editable text. Having said that, the texts had bad formatting and disproportionate text size. So, I had to clear off the formatting manually.
Pros:
- Fast
- Accurate for PDFs as well as handwritten notes
Cons:
- No Batch File Processing
- 2 MB max limit
Visit Google Drive
3. FreeOCR
FreeOCR is an extremely popular OCR recognition app for Windows. The OCR app inherently uses Google’s Optical Recognition Engine called Tesseract. The FreeOCR App UI is orthodox which makes sense since it was last updated in 2015. You get 2 divided panes for Input Image and Output Text. The top-end has a toolbar where you get 2 separate buttons to either upload a PDF or Image. Once you have your sample uploaded, you have to just click on OCR button at the top toolbar. From the extended menu, click on “OCR for the current Page”.
Free Ocr Mac
You also have the option to batch process OCR for multiple documents. For that, you need to upload all pages and select “OCR All Pages”. After a few seconds of processing, the app returns the extracted text on the right side pane. You can choose to copy this text or convert it into an MS Word File or RTF File ie. Wordpad. The controls for this are available on the left side of the output Pane.
Verdict: FreeOCR supports multiple languages like French, Deutsche, Italian, etc. This seems like a neat feature although I can’t test that out. What I can test is my cursive handwriting on a piece of paper. For that, FreeOCR failed miserably. My sample test document was converted to some junk alphabets like One Note and it was highly inaccurate. For the Minutes of the Meeting, FreeOCR was perfectly accurate. Although, it doesn’t convert the tables.
Pros:
- Batch File Processing
- Fast
- Accurate for PDFs or scanned document
- Multiple Language support
Cons:
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- Poor File Management
- Doesn’t work for handwritten notes
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4. SimpleOCR
SimpleOCR is an OCR and Document management offering from Simple Software. It has a whole suite of file management, file scanning, and file indexing software. I will only address the SimpleOCR software which is built for character recognition of handwritten text and scanned documents. SimpleOCR uses its own Fine Reader OCR to process the documents and identify the text.
Initially, you have to train the software with your handwritten text or scanned documents of a particular font. It would be easier for the app to understand if you use the same font for most of your documents. You can convert innumerable documents and pictures but for handwritten documents, you get a 14-day trial. Having said that, PDFs and scanned documents conversion are fast & accurate. The file management is awesome and batch file processing works flawlessly.
Verdict: SimpleOCR failed to identify the handwritten text sample accurately. However, it aced some of the parts. The main thing with SimpleOCR is you need to provide the software with lots of written samples. Ideally, it requires you to provide samples of 300-500 words for it to train accordingly. With the minutes of the meeting surprisingly, it wasn’t able to detect the text. In the entire OCR list, SimpleOCR is the only app which failed to detect the machine written text.
Pros:
- File Management
- Inbuilt Dictionary and auto-correct
Cons:
- The slow and lengthy conversion process
- Inaccurate for handwritten notes
Download SimpleOCR
5. Abby Fine Reader Online
Similar to SimpleOCR, Abby Fine Reader is also a whole suite of file management software. However, there is an online web version which does OCR conversion of documents. You do have to register on the website and you only get 10 conversions for free. Abby Fine Reader uses the same FineReader Engines as SimpleOCR. This makes the results highly predictable.
You have to upload the file to the web app or you can choose to connect your Google Drive account to it. Abby Fine also supports a couple of other cloud services like DropBox, OneDrive. After you have uploaded the documents, you can go ahead for recognition by clicking on the Recognize button.
Verdict: With my sample document, Abby Fine Reader wasn’t able to recognize it. For testing, I tried a couple of mobile screenshots and PDF documents. The app was able to accurately convert it to text. The web app doesn’t provide you the texts directly and you have to rather convert them to a document type and export it to a cloud service. This really makes the web app dependent on cloud services.
Pros:
- Intuitive process & fast conversion
- Multiple export options and cloud services
- Batch Processing
Cons:
- Doesn’t work for handwritten notes
Visit Abby Fine Reader Online
Best OCR Software For Windows
In case you have to deal with scanned PDF conversions, One Note is a good simple solution. However, the One Note conversion process is rather time-consuming. For batch processing of scanned PDFs and larger documents, you can try FreeOCR or Abby Fine Reader. For Handwritten texts, I would prefer Google Drive any day. It works well and was the most accurate in our testing.
For more queries or issues, let me know in the comments below.
Read: Best OCR App For Android