Ghost Text
Text Recognition, Reinvented
Hey Indie Hackers,
It’s January 2026, and while timelines are filled with “$10K MRR in 30 days” posts, I wanted to share a much smaller, yet very real win.
In the last 3 months, I bootstrapped GhostText from $0 to $196 as a solo developer, with no funding, no audience, and no team.
It wasn’t glamorous.
It wasn’t linear.
And honestly… it was a hell of a ride.
If you’re building a tiny macOS product, struggling to get your first paying users, this one’s for you.
What is GhostText?
GhostText is a macOS OCR app that lets you extract unselectable on-screen text from images, videos, PDFs, websites, system UI, basically anywhere text exists but can’t be copied.
Think:
Screenshots
YouTube frames
Design mockups
Locked PDFs
Apps that block text selection
I built it because I needed it myself, and turns out, others did too.
The Beginning: Doubt and Overthinking
When I started GhostText, I had:
No launch plan
No email list
No pricing confidence
No idea if anyone would pay
I kept asking myself:
Isn’t macOS OCR already solved? Why would anyone buy this? Am I wasting my time?
First Sales: Validation > Money
Eventually, I shipped.
A simple landing page
A one-time payment model
A few posts explaining the problem GhostText solves
Then something small—but powerful—happened.
First purchase.
Then another.
That hit harder than the money.
By the end of Month 2:
Revenue: ~$136
Users: real humans, actually using the app
Confidence: still shaky, but growing
Why $196 Matters (More Than It Looks)
$196 won’t change my life.
But it changes everything else.
It means:
People are willing to pay
The problem is real
The product isn’t a toy
This can grow
Going from $0 → first dollar is harder than going from $1K → $5K.
And that first slope?
It’s steep.
Final Thoughts
If you’re sitting at $0, staring at Stripe dashboards, wondering if it’s worth continuing:
It is.
The first hill is brutal.
But once you climb it—even a little—the view changes.
Here’s to small wins, honest numbers, and building things that solve real problems
Happy building ❤️
Hey everyone,
If you’ve been using Ghost Text for free and it’s helped you copy text from screenshots, videos, or PDFs without the hassle of retyping… thank you! It means the world to me that this app is making your life easier.
Ghost Text is a side project built out of love, and I want to keep improving it and create more helpful tools like this. If you’d like to support me and help keep the app growing, you can contribute through Buy Me a Coffee. Even $1 goes a long way in helping with hosting, domains, API costs, and it keeps the project alive.
Buy Me a Coffee
Your contribution is never expected, but always appreciated. Every little bit helps and motivates me to build more awesome tools for you!
Thank you for being part of this journey ❤️
Hey everyone,
A quick update about Ghost Text, the free macOS app you’ve been using to copy text from screenshots, videos, and PDFs!
Thanks to you, Ghost Text has been a hit. We’ve crossed 200+ users, and I’m blown away by the support and feedback you’ve shared so far.
To continue improving and to fund my next free product, Ghost Text will now be available for a lifetime license at $4.99. The funds will help cover hosting, domain costs, and API services, allowing me to build even more tools without any subscriptions or other interruptions.
Your support means everything. If you want to keep using Ghost Text and help me build more free tools, this is a huge way to contribute.
Check out the new pricing and grab a coupon:
30% and 50% discount coupons available – grab them while they last!
GhostText30
GhostText50
The app is still built with love and aimed at solving the same annoying problem making stuck text selectable everywhere.
Hey folks 👋
I just launched my side project Ghost Text on Product Hunt today!
It’s a free macOS app that lets you copy text from places where you normally can't like screenshots, videos, or scanned PDFs. Basically, anywhere text is “stuck” as an image, Ghost Text makes it selectable.
I built it because I kept running into those annoying moments when I wanted to grab a piece of text but ended up retyping it manually 😅
Would love if you could check it out and share any feedback — design, UX, features I should add, anything. Here’s the launch page: Product Hunt
If you like the idea, an upvote on PH would mean the world 🙏 but more importantly, I’m looking to learn from your thoughts and improve the app.
Thanks!
Ghost Text
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Congrats on the launch. Ghost Text looks like a super handy free macOS OCR app. Just checked it out on Product Hunt. Wishing you lots of votes and success.
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How about windows?
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I run into that all the time with screenshots or scanned docs. Just gave it a try and it works smoothly - feels like one of those tools you don’t realize you need until you use it.
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Exactly! That was the goal to make it super seamless for those everyday moments where you don’t even think you’ll need it, but it saves you time instantly. Glad it worked smoothly for you
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Yeah, that makes sense, I didn't realize how much time I was wasting until I tried it. It's those little tasks that sneak up and pile on, so having something that just works without thinking about it really does make a difference
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Is not macOS supporting it natively? Was sure that latest versions do it by drfault
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macOS does have Live Text for images, but it’s limited to certain apps and formats. This tool works anywhere screenshots, PDFs, apps with locked text so you’re not restricted to where Apple supports it
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Is the OCR fully on-device (Apple Vision vs Tesseract), and how do you handle privacy for screenshots? Also, any plans for a global shortcut and batch/continuous capture from video frames?
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Global shortcut support is on the way (I’ve been experimenting with making it system-wide, rather than just the menu trigger). Batch/continuous capture from video frames is also on the roadmap, which I see as being extremely useful for people dealing with lectures, tutorials, or meetings.
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Nice - system-wide shortcut would be clutch. For video, a continuous capture mode with a 0.5–2s interval and "append to clipboard/document" would save tons of copy steps.
Btw, I got an offer for you that will benefit both of us. I am developing a social network for entrepreneurs and will be launching a closed beta in 19 days, and if you would register in the waitlist, and just tell people the story of your project in a post format, we could boost it so more people will know about Ghost Text!
You get: more users
We get: an entrepreneur on board
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Looks cool! I’ve seen tools that let you copy text from PDFs ...... keen to know how Ghost Text is different. Does it also handle things like grabbing text from YouTube videos or screenshots on the fly?
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Yes it does
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Voted
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thanks buddy
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Congrats on the launch. OCR tools always sound niche until you realize how often you need them, and having it baked right into macOS with a clean UX is super handy. Just tried it on a screenshot and it worked perfectly.
A few months ago, I was watching a tutorial and needed to copy a line of code from the video.
Except… I couldn’t. No way to select it. My only option was to pause, squint, and retype it manually.
That got me thinking: why isn’t there a simple way to just grab text from anywhere on screen?
Fast forward to today, I ended up building Ghost Text, a free macOS app that lets you copy text from places where you normally can't like screenshots, videos, or scanned PDFs. Basically, anywhere text is “stuck” as an image, Ghost Text makes it selectable.
I’d love for you to give it a try and let me know what you think design, UX, features I should add, anything.
If you find it useful, your support would mean a lot 🙏
Ghost Text
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“That’s a clean little utility. Did you build it just for yourself first, or did you always plan to share it?”
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Congrats on shipping Ghost Text!
A few concrete ideas that might help with adoption and learning:
1) Above-the-fold clarity
Spell out the exact pain + constraint: “Works in any app? Plain text only? Keeps formatting? System-wide shortcut?”
A 15–20s GIF of the before/after would answer 80% of questions.
2) First-run & onboarding
On macOS a lot of friction is from permissions. Consider a tiny checklist on first launch:
• grant Accessibility / pasteboard permissions
• set a global shortcut
• try a 10-sec “hello world” task
3) Keyboard-first details
Menu bar + global shortcut + “Paste without formatting” toggle are killer for power users.
If you support templates/snippets, show 1 example (e.g., date stamps, removing UTM).
4) Trust & privacy
One line about local-only processing (if true) and what’s collected. Add a “Send feedback” item in the menu.
5) Instrumentation
Track: first_launch, permission_granted, shortcut_set, first_successful_action, daily_active, crash.
It’ll show you exactly where new users drop.
6) Distribution ideas
Post a short GIF + one-liner to r/MacApps, r/mac, r/Productivity, and “Show HN”.
Also list on AlternativeTo & MacUpdate; consider Setapp later if you add a Pro tier.
7) Monetization (if ever)
Keep a generous free tier; add Pro for advanced templates, iCloud sync, multi-snippets, regex/transform rules.
If you share the core use case you’re optimizing for, happy to suggest a tighter headline.
Nice work shipping a tidy Mac utility!
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Congratulations on your launch!
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Hey, this sounds super relatable! That frustration of not being able to copy code from a tutorial is real. It's awesome that you turned that annoyance into building Ghost Text. I bet many developers will find this tool incredibly useful for those tricky situations. Great idea!
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Congratulations on the launch!
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thanks buddy
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Congrats with the launch 🎉 Are you planning to monetize it?
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