OCR in Windows 10

November 13, 2015

Believe it or not, Windows 10 comes with OCR capabilities out of the box. It’s actually very easy to use as well; admittedly, it’s not the most sensitive in the world - but it does basically work. Here’s how you would scan in a bitmap image and recognise characters:



        public async string RecogniseOCR()
        {                        
            var ocrEngine = Windows.Media.Ocr.OcrEngine.TryCreateFromLanguage(new Windows.Globalization.Language("en"));
            
            var file = await Package.Current.InstalledLocation.GetFileAsync(@"Assets\\test.bmp");            
            using (var stream = await file.OpenAsync(Windows.Storage.FileAccessMode.Read))
            {
                // Create image decoder.
                var decoder = await BitmapDecoder.CreateAsync(stream);

                // Load bitmap.
                var bitmap = await decoder.GetSoftwareBitmapAsync();

                // Extract text from image.
                OcrResult result = await ocrEngine.RecognizeAsync(bitmap);

                // Return recognized text.
                return result.Text;
            }
        }

I scanned this image:

And it found this:

Like I said - not the most sensitive recognition in the world, but still, it’s there in Windows 10! What’s remarkable is that I only found it by accident - another example of Microsoft marketing missing a huge opportunity.