[Tip] Disable Copy Text from Image (Text Recognition) in Firefox on macOS

In Mozilla Firefox 106 and later versions, a new feature “Text Recognition” has been added on macOS only. This new feature allows users to copy and extract text from images by just right-clicking on the image and selecting “Copy text from Image” option. If you use Firefox on mac and want to disable or remove this feature, this article will help you.

Following screenshot shows “Copy Text from Image” feature live in action in Firefox on macOS:

Once you select the option, Firefox automatically copies the detected text from the image and displays a dialog box or message box containing the full text copied from the image. Now you can paste the copied text anywhere such as text editing programs, etc.

PS: If the “Copy text from Image” option doesn’t appear on right-click menu, try holding Shift while right-clicking.

Text recognition feature is available in Firefox 106 and later versions and can be used in macOS 10.15 (Catalina) or higher. In macOS 10.15, text recognition only supports English language but macOS 11.0 (Big Sur) or higher versions support other languages as well such as English, French, Italian, German, Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish.

Text recognition feature works on .jpg, .png and .webp image formats only.

If you worried about data collection and privacy issues and don’t want to use this feature, here is a working solution to disable text recognition feature in Firefox.

Mozilla team has provided a hidden secret preference/flag to disable or remove Text recognition feature from Firefox on macOS.

Following steps will help you in turning off Text recognition feature in Firefox:

1. Open Firefox and type about:config in the addressbar and press Enter. It’ll show you a warning message, click on “Accept the Risk and Continue” button. It’ll open Firefox’s hidden secret advanced configuration page i.e. about:config page.

2. Now type text-rec in Search filter box and you’ll see following preference in the window:

3. Double-click on the preference dom.text-recognition.enabled and set its value to false. Alternatively, you can click on the Toggle icon given next to the preference name.

That’s it. Now try to right-click on any image and “copy text from image” option will no longer appear on the context menu.

PS: In future, if you decide to restore or re-enable text recognition feature in Firefox, set the above mentioned preference to true again.

Also Check:

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