Enhancing Accessibility with Seamless Screen Recognition

Welcome to VOCR

Discover the cutting-edge capabilities of VOCR, your ultimate OCR and AI-powered screen recognition tool designed to enhance your digital accessibility experience. Beyond the simple navigation feature with OCR, VOCR seamlessly integrates with VoiceOver, enabling users to effortlessly capture and recognize screen content with intuitive and customizable shortcuts. With features like Real-Time OCR, users can continuously monitor and read live content, such as subtitles. The ASK AI functionality allows you to leverage advanced AI models to ask detailed questions about images and receive insightful answers. VOCR works with any OpenAI-compatible API, with built-in support for Claude, Gemini, Ollama, OpenAI, and OpenRouter. A flexible preset system lets you configure multiple AI providers and switch between them instantly. Explore with AI takes it a step further by analyzing images, identifying different areas, and providing comprehensive descriptions.

VOCR's robust suite of features offers unparalleled control and precision, making it an indispensable tool for users seeking a seamless, efficient, and highly functional OCR solution. Whether you're navigating inaccessible applications or curious about images, VOCR empowers you to do more with ease and confidence.

WARNING: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

VOCR is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, expressed or implied, of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Please see the GNU General Public License for more details.

Download

Here is the direct link to download VOCR v3.0.0-beta.1.

Setup

To ensure VOCR works properly, it is crucial to follow every step precisely. Missing even one step could prevent VOCR from functioning correctly.

1. After uncompressing the downloaded zip file, move the application to your Applications folder and run it.
2. Confirm VOCR is running in the menu bar by pressing vo+m twice.
3. In VoiceOver Utility, under the General category, check the box for "Allow VoiceOver to be controlled with AppleScript."
4. If active, turn off the screen curtain with vo+shift+f11. Note that the screen curtain must be off for the app to work properly.
5. Hide VoiceOver visuals with vo+command+f11 if they are displayed. If not hidden, elements like the VoiceOver caption panel will be recognized along with other screen content.
6. Press command+shift+control+w. You should receive a notification asking for accessibility permission. If VoiceOver does not automatically focus on the window, press vo+f1 twice to display the list of currently running apps; the system dialog should be in this list.
7. After granting accessibility permission, press command+shift+control+w again to receive a notification requesting permission for VOCR to take a screenshot. If you do not receive the alert, locate the system dialog as described previously.
8. If you cannot locate the system dialog, go to System Settings, Privacy & Security, then choose Screen Recording, and find the VOCR app.
9. After granting accessibility permission, restart the app as prompted.
10. Verify the app is in the menu bar by pressing vo+m twice.
11. Press command+shift+control+w. You should hear a beep and a voice prompt saying "finished."
12. You can now navigate the recognized results using command+control+arrows. Refer to the shortcuts section below for more information.
13. When navigating results for the first time, an alert will prompt you to allow VOCR to control VoiceOver for speaking announcements.
14. Press Escape to exit VOCR's navigation mode and free up navigation shortcuts.

OCR VoiceOver Cursor

This feature is useful for capturing specific portions of a screen, such as a video player on a webpage or images on social media.

1. Move your VoiceOver cursor to the element you want to recognize.
2. Press command+shift+control+v.
   • The first time you use this feature, you will receive an alert to allow VOCR to run AppleScript.
3. After granting permission, press command+shift+control+v again.

Real-Time OCR

Press Command+Shift+Control+R after scanning a window or using VOCursor to start or stop real-time OCR. When activated, VOCR will continuously scan and report only new content. This is useful for reading live content such as subtitles.

Setup AI Model

VOCR uses a Preset system to manage AI configurations. Each preset stores its own API URL, API key, model, and prompts, so you can set up as many AI configurations as you like and switch between them instantly from the Presets menu.

Built-in provider URLs are included for Claude, Gemini, Ollama, OpenAI, and OpenRouter. Any service that offers an OpenAI-compatible API will work.

To create a preset:

1. Open the VOCR Menu and go to Presets > Preset Manager.
2. Create a new preset and enter your API URL, API key, and model.
3. API keys are encrypted and stored securely using the macOS Keychain, and are only displayed once in plain text when creating a preset.

To use a local vision language model with Ollama:

Ollama is free and private, but it is less accurate and requires a lot of computing power. I recommend M1 chip or later with minimum 16GB memory.

1. Download and install Ollama.

2. Download a multimodal (vision-language) model by executing the following command in your terminal:

   ollama pull qwen3-vl
   

Note that there are also qwen3-vl:30b, which offer higher accuracy but require more storage, memory, and computing power.

3. Create a preset in VOCR with the Ollama provider URL and your chosen model.

You may also want to try a related app called VOLlama. It is an accessible chat client for Ollama, allowing you to easily interact with an open-source large language model that runs locally on your computer.

ASK AI

After setting up a preset:

1. Select your desired preset from the Presets menu.
2. Scan a window/VOCursor or capture an image from a camera.
3. Press Command+Shift+Control+A to ask the AI a question about the image.

The response and token usage information will be copied to the clipboard so you can review in case you miss it.

A Follow up checkbox in the Ask dialog lets you carry on a multi-turn conversation with the AI instead of starting fresh each time.

Also you can select an image file in Finder, bring up the contextual menu with VO+Shift+M, go to 'Open with,' and choose VOCR to ask a question about the image.

Explore with AI

1. Select your desired preset from the Presets menu.
2. Scan a window or use VOCursor.
3. Press Command+Shift+Control+E.

VOCR will ask the AI to analyze the image, identify various areas, and describe the contents of each. You can navigate the results using the shortcuts Command + Control + Arrows.

You can customize the system prompt and user prompt used by Explore mode via Presets > Edit Explore Prompts.

Note: This feature is experimental and often produces inaccurate descriptions of locations and content.

Global Shortcuts

These shortcuts work at all times:

• VOCR Menu: Command+Shift+Control+S
• OCR Window: Command+Shift+Control+W
• OCR VoiceOver Cursor: Command+Shift+Control+V
• Ask AI: Command+Shift+Control+A
• Camera Capture: Command+Shift+Control+C
• Toggle Real-Time OCR: Command+Shift+Control+R
• Explore with AI: Command+Shift+Control+E

Navigation Shortcuts

These shortcuts only work when navigation is active after a scan:

• Move down/up: Command+Control+Down/Up Arrow
• Move left/right: Command+Control+Left/Right Arrow
• Previous/next character: Command+Shift+Control+Left/Right Arrow
• Go to top/bottom: Command+Control+Page Up/Down
• Go to beginning/end horizontally: Command+Control+Home/End
• Exit navigation: Escape
• Location: Command+Control+L (Reports current coordinates)
• Identify Object: Command+Control+I (Identifies current object with AI when object detection is enabled in settings)

Settings

Access the VOCR Menu with Command+Control+Shift+S. This menu contains all settings and operations.

• Target Window: Allows you to scan a different window than the current one.
• Autoscan: Automatically scans after clicking an item with VO+Shift+Space.
• Detect Object: Locates objects with no text such as icons.
• Use Preset Prompt: Sends the prompt saved in the active preset without showing the dialog when asking AI with Command+Shift+Control+A.
• Move Mouse: Moves the mouse cursor when you navigate.
• Positional Audio: Provides audio feedback as the mouse cursor moves. Frequency changes correspond to vertical location, and audio panning corresponds to horizontal position. If you don't hear the audio feedback, go to Settings > Sound Output.
• Reset Position: When disabled, the cursor will not reset to the top-left corner after every new scan.
• Launch on Login: Automatically runs VOCR when you log in.
• Log: Starts writing logs to VOCR.txt in your Documents folder.
• Sound Output: Choose a sound device for audio positional feedback.
• Choose Camera: Select the camera to use for capturing an image.
• Shortcuts: Customize shortcuts.
• Reset: Erase all settings and presets and start fresh.

Operation

When you open the VOCR menu, few operations are available after a scan:

• Save Last Image
• Save OCR Result
• Updates

Troubleshooting

• If you hear "nothing found," you likely need to turn off the VoiceOver screen curtain with vo+shift+f11 or adjust accessibility and screen recording permissions in System Settings > Privacy & Security.
• If you do not hear anything after using the "OCR VoiceOver Cursor" feature, you probably need to grant VOCR permission to send Apple Events.

Usually, relaunching VOCR and reissuing the command causes the permission alerts to reappear in the system dialogs as described above.

If VOCR does not work properly after a macOS update, try resetting all the privacy and security settings for VOCR.

1. Select Reset in the VOCR settings menu.
2. Quit VOCR.
3. Open Terminal in Applications > Utilities.
4. Run tccutil reset All com.chikim.VOCR
5. Run sudo tccutil reset All com.chikim.VOCR
6. Enter your admin password.
7. Reboot.
8. Run VOCR and grant all the necessary permissions again as described above.

Lastly, please enjoy using VOCR!