Capture2Text Installation & First OCR Capture: Setup Guide

What You Need Before You Start

Capture2Text is a portable Windows application — there is no installer, no setup wizard, and nothing is written to the Windows registry. You need:

• A Windows PC (officially Windows 7/8/8.1/10; widely reported to work on Windows 11)
• The Capture2Text zip from our download page (latest: v4.6.3, 2022-03-19)
• An unzip tool (Windows Explorer handles zip files natively; 7-Zip also works)

Step 1 — Download the Zip

Head to the download page and grab the latest release. Pick the 64-bit zip on any modern PC; the 32-bit zip is only for legacy 32-bit Windows. Keep the file — since Capture2Text is portable, this zip is your installer.

Step 2 — Extract the Zip

Right-click the zip and choose Extract All (or unzip with 7-Zip). You must extract before running — launching Capture2Text.exe from inside the zip without extracting is the #1 reason it “doesn’t work at all” (the official troubleshooting guide calls this out explicitly). Put the extracted Capture2Text folder somewhere permanent, e.g. C:\Tools\Capture2Text — moving it later is harmless, but do not leave it in Downloads if you like a tidy system.

Step 3 — Launch Capture2Text.exe

Open the extracted folder and double-click Capture2Text.exe. Nothing dramatic happens — that is normal. Capture2Text runs from the system tray.

If you get a “missing DLL” error

Install the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 (both x86 and x64) from Microsoft’s site, then launch again. This is the official fix listed in the Capture2Text documentation.

Step 4 — Find the Tray Icon

Look at the bottom-right of your screen, near the clock. If you do not see the Capture2Text icon, click the “Show hidden icons” arrow (^) — Windows hides new tray icons there by default. Right-click the icon (left-click does nothing, per the official FAQ) to open the menu: you can select the OCR language and open Settings.

Step 5 — Perform Your First OCR Capture

1. Position your mouse at the top-left of any text on screen.
2. Press Win+Q. A blue capture box appears.
3. Move the mouse to resize the box over the text (hold the right mouse button and drag to move the whole box).
4. Press Win+Q again (or left-click, or press Enter). The recognized text is copied to your clipboard and shown in a popup.

That is the core loop of Capture2Text. From here, learn the other capture modes in our hotkey reference (Win+E for whole lines, Win+S for comic speech bubbles), or see all guides.

Where Are Settings Stored?

By default, settings live in %appdata%\Capture2Text as an .ini file. Deleting that file resets everything to defaults. If you want the settings to travel with the folder (e.g. on a USB stick), launch with the --portable flag — see our portable guide.

How to Uninstall

There is no uninstaller because there was never an installer: delete the Capture2Text folder and, if you like, the %appdata%\Capture2Text settings folder. Done.

Frequently Asked Questions