Everyone knows how to copy text — simply highlight the subject with your cursor and do CTRL +C. Simple, Right? But what if you want to copy text from where it’s not allowed? Like a right-click disable website, a write-protected PDF, a Windows error dialog box or the comments from YouTube’s official Android app.
The Kindle is a wonderful reading device, unfortunately it has some arbitrarily imposed limitations that severely impact its usability for serious study or research work. One of the most limiting aspects, is the limit on “clippings”. While the Kindle enables you to copy and paste from Web pages in a browser, you cannot directly copy from an eBook. However, Amazon does offer a highlighting feature, which enables you to access highlighted text. Alternatively, you can also copy and paste on Mac using the mouse or the trackpad.
The usual way to copy unselectable text is by using an OCR reader. Simply take a screenshot of the area containing text and run it through any good OCR software as Google keep. But, this takes time and is definitely not an ideal solution.
So what other options do we have?
Well, thankfully, there are tools to copy any text even if it’s unselectable. So, let’s check out the best method in every platform.
#1 Copy Text from Right-Click Disabled Website (Web)
To disable copying of text, most websites use some sought of JavaScript, so the first thing to try is – disabling JavaScript in your browser. If it’s a banking website, then you can try a plugin like RightToCopy.
But even if this doesn’t work, you can look at the source code of that website or try the Google cache version of that site, by appending cache:// at the beginning of its URL. Although, this method only works for blogs that are indexed by Google.
For instance — if the original URL is
example.com/something.html
then the final URL will become
cache://example.com/something.html
And the final resort is to download the web page to your local machine or press, CTRL + P to open the print preview and there you’ll see save as PDF option. Use that.
#2 Copy Unselectable Text from Windows
Say you want to copy text from an error dialogue box. Well, this is more simple than you think it’s, simply clicks on the dialogue box and do CTRL +C and the entire error message will get copied to your clipboard.
But what if, you want to copy text from other programs like registry editor or control panel, etc? Well in such cases, you can use Textify. It’s a simple, lightweight app (only 76 KB) and does what it say.
Simply run the Textify.exe, click on any window from which you want to grab the text. And then Textify will magically make the system text selectable. (see video demo)
#3 Copy Unselectable Text from Mac
This is relatively difficult in Mac since there is no lightweight app to do it. But if you have XCode installed (a tool to develop apps for Apple ecosystem) then it’s pretty easy to copy text from any Mac app.
Simply open the window from where you want to copy text, and then turn on Accessibility Inspector. You can find it under Developer > Application > Utilities > Accessibility tools.
But again, installing heavy apps like Xcode just for extracting text is not feasible. You are better off with OCR readers. And that’s why, I haven’t tested this method personally, so for details check this answer on StackExchange.
#4 Copy Unselectable Text from Android
Being a YouTuber, I often have to copy comments from YouTube’s Android app or let say you want to copy text from Facebook or Instagram mobile app. Overall most native apps don’t give you options to select text from it.
Well, with apps like Universal Copy, you can copy text from any app, even if there is no option to highlight it. Simply install the app, next go to any app from which you want to copy the text, pull down the notification drawer, and select Activate Universal Copy mode. Now, tap on text, and it’ll be copied to your clipboard.
If you have Android marshmallow then you can also use Google Now on tap to copy text from any app that does not let you copy text from it or even a text from an image.
You can also take a screenshot of that page and use Google keep to extract text from the images.
How To Copy And Paste
Closing Words
Anything that you can see on the screen — text, images, or video can be easily copied or downloaded to your computer. Either by using an OCR reader or by right software.
To copy paste text without any formatting do CTRL + SHIFT + V instead of CTRL + V.
If English is not your primary language, but if you want to read in it as much as you can, you will find this simple tip useful. The trick is really fast and is using the feature to look up reference in Google web search. You can translate words in Kindle app (iOS, Android, other platforms, too), but also in other e-reading applications that offer Google lookup.
“Sure,” you can say, “Why not using a built-in dictionary?” I use a dictionary by default, but sometimes a description in English is too difficult for me, and I can’t figure out a proper Polish word. In such cases ability to quickly translate this word to a mother tongue would solve the problem.
There are lots of translating apps for iOS, Android and any other mobile operating system. The problem is that sometimes it’s a couple of taps too far to use them. You need to switch to another application, type a word again (or paste it, if there was an option to copy it in the e-reading app). Then you have to switch back to the e-reading app.
How to quickly translate words in Kindle app
1. When you find a word you want to translate, highlight it, and at the bottom of the explanation window, tap on a Google link.
You’ll see a Google search page in an inline browser:
2. Now, here comes the trick. In a search box add two words that tell Google to find a translation. The phrase is “to Polish”, or “to Italian”, or “to Portuguese”, etc. Please note that it should be stated in English, not in your mother tongue. The other phrase that also does the job is “in Polish”, “in Italian”, etc.
Tap on Search button and you’ll see a translation as on a screenshot below:
How To Copy And Paste From Kindle For Mac Download
I told you it’s gonna be quick. As you see, you don’t have to go to a special Google Translate page. It’s just a matter of typing a few words. If you want to be even quicker in iOS, you can add the phrase (like in my case “to Polish”) to shortcuts. To do that, open Settings, then Keyboard, then scroll down to bottom and tap on Add New Shortcut.
Kindle app lets find a Google reference in an inline browser, so to close the search you just have to tap on Done button in the top right corner. I tested the Google trick in the iBooks, Kobo, and Bluefire Reader apps and it also work, but in the first two apps, the Define feature redirects to Safari, so you’ll need to go back to the e-reading app every time after the translation is being performed.
A good thing about Google Translate is that you don’t have to download to Kindle app the dictionary in other language (for instance a German one) if you want to look up for a word in German language. Google detects the original language, so that you can translate words from any language to any language.
In general, I’m amazed with how good is Google Translate. Combined with a very well designed and fast mobile interface it can be a solution to most of the translation tasks you have on a tablet or smartphone. No extra apps needed.
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