Sometimes – or perhaps oftentimes – you’ll see a piece of text that you simply can’t access due to a number of factors. For instance, the text may be contained within an image. While shorter messages can be simply typed out, the longer ones, perhaps such as a quote or more complex messages, are not something one typically finds fun, as it takes more time and decreases levels of productivity for workers. Even if you want to leisurely share a message, you still won’t want to go through this hassle.

This is where Capture2Text comes into play. It’s a free optical character recognition tool which allows you to point to the image and quickly grab the text, thus automatically copying it to the clipboard for you. “And it really can be that simple,” adds Beta New’s Mike Williams. Not only is there no installation fee, but the program works transparently in the background to be accessed at any time, only consuming around 4MB RAM (News - Alert).

Now, the tool has integrated a speech recognition feature, which allows users to press a hotkey and speak into their microphone to display various transcripts. By merely verbalizing the beginning of the desired text and then clicking on the rest, it will be automatically sent to the user’s clipboard.

While Williams says that “in practice, this didn’t prove to be quite as good as it sounds,” he also suggests that “if you’re interested in the core idea…we’d say try the program anyways.” The program boasts convenience, ease of use and it’s free – it can’t get much better than that. Plus, voice recognition software can be tricky; not everybody can create the next Siri.

Despite the fact that there were “intermittent problems” when launching the tool including spotty OCR accuracy, this speaks volumes for the future of speech recognition software capabilities, which continue to fly sky high.