I am building a desktop app to pull (using OCR) non-selectable text from anywhere

Hello, Indie Hackers! 👋

This is my first #BuildingInPublic product! 🚀

I'm very excited, to share my thoughts and wins and struggles along the way.

I'm creating a Windows desktop application - TextUnbox - that can extract an unselectable text from anywhere - images, videos, PDF files, etc.

My goal is to make the text pulling very intuitive and easy:

1. using the mouse (or a helper dialog) select screen region to capture, with the text in it
2. releasing the mouse button triggers the extraction and the recognized text is put in the clipboard
3. use the text :-)

The OCR occurs in the cloud. That is why every user needs a license key in order to use the desktop application.

I am not sure yet, how the pricing model should look - buy one key forever or subscription based (monthly or annually).

The first implemented provider for payments will be Gumroad.

The license key could also be used to access the REST API that sits in the background (if someone whats to develop something with it).

The API could be used not only to create Windows desktop applications, but also applications for other operating systems, mobile applications and web sites.

I already built a very small PoC, that works pretty well. I am currently working on converting the PoC to a MVP. 😃

Status updates will be documented here on IH (as milestones on the product page) and on twitter as ever-growing comment section of this tweet: https://twitter.com/keenthinker/status/1363609099376730115

I will be happy to hear your feedback and any thoughts on this product (idea).