Viz

Project Status: On Hold

As you may have noticed, development on the app has basically stopped since end of 2025, so I wanted to provide some context.

Between a new job, joining a friend who is building a SaaS company, and other life priorities, I no longer have the time needed to actively maintain or continue development on the project.

Another major reason is that I previously relied on my work MacBook for development. After changing jobs, I no longer have access to a Mac device that I can use for personal development work, which means I’m currently unable to build, test, or release updates for the app.

Because of that, issue responses, feature work, PR reviews, and new releases are effectively on hold indefinitely for now.

The project is not abandoned entirely, and I’d still like to return to it someday if circumstances change. For now though, I want to be transparent that active development is no longer possible on my end.

Thank you to everyone who has used the app, reported issues, submitted ideas, or contributed. I genuinely appreciate all of the support the project has received.

Status: On Hold
Version: 2.3.3
Download · Commits

Extract text from images, videos, QR codes, barcodes and colors with a simple snip mechanism.

Features

• Very quick extraction process (Can set fidelity between fast and accurate as per the Apple Vision framework)
• Can extract text based on all languages or select your language in settings for quicker/accurate captures
• Copies to clipboard automatically, ready to paste
• Post-processing option to execute shell commands when capture is taken. Can use the captured text via [ocr] token within the shell commands
• Customizable hotkeys for the main app functions
• Shows copied text in a floating window, which can be set to auto-hide as well after a custom wait period
• Enable or disable line breaks in the extracted text
• Append multiple text snippets to the clipboard by enabling Append option in Settings, otherwise it only holds one snippet at a time
• Saves captures in History and persists app restarts
• Also saves History to iCloud Drive if enabled
• Launch at login option
• Custom auto-updater that pulls latest release notes and binaries from GitHub Releases

Preview

Text Extraction Demo

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/409044dd-3765-48df-9017-0f6376ed11f8

QR/Barcode Extraction Demo

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c75c9b47-9724-4b5a-ab51-363e8249fabb

Color Picker Demo

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/bacbf405-d2e4-496c-b79e-fde000361962

History View

Requirements

• MacOS 13.0+ (App uses some newer SwiftUI functions/modifiers which don't work on anything lower than 13.0)

Getting Viz

brew install viz

License

[!IMPORTANT] Viz is licensed under Apache 2.0 with Commons Clause. This means that you can do anything you'd like with the source, modify it, contribute to it, etc., but the license explicitly prohibits any form of monetization for Viz or any modified versions of it. See full license HERE

Some of my apps

Pearcleaner - An opensource app cleaner with privacy in mind

Sentinel - A GUI for controlling gatekeeper status on your mac

Viz - Utility for extracting text from images, videos, qr/barcodes

PearHID - Remap your macOS keyboard with a simple SwiftUI frontend