[Text Extractor] OCR engine doesn't recognize multiline text on ARM64 Windows 10

[yuyoyuppe]

Microsoft PowerToys version

0.62

Running as admin

• Yes

Area(s) with issue?

TextExtractor

Steps to reproduce

• use Microsoft Surface Pro X running Windows 10 ARM64
• launch Text Extractor
• Select multiline text in a rectangle
• Observe that it won't be recognized in most cases

✔️ Expected Behavior

the same text could be easily recognized on x64

❌ Actual Behavior

No response

Other Software

No response

[marypcbuk]

unless I'm doing it wrong, Text Extractor doesn't recognize any text on my Arm system - Surface Pro X 2 running Windows 10.

PT 0.62 running as user
repro
press Shift-Win-T
see the crosshair
select a single line of text
use Win-V to check the clipboard to see that it has not been updated
note that the cursor stays as a crosshair and I have to press esc to clear it

[yuyoyuppe]

@marypcbuk yeah, similar to mine. interestingly, just clicking on a word (instead of selecting a rectangle) works a bit better.

[TheJoeFin]

@snickler can you test if this issue is still open on version 0.69.1?

[snickler]

@snickler can you test if this issue is still open on version 0.69.1?

Oh wait, was this just affecting Windows 10?

[TheJoeFin]

@snickler can you test if this issue is still open on version 0.69.1?

Oh wait, was this just affecting Windows 10?

Not sure. It would make sense to test against Win11 & Win10, is it easy for you to do one of them?

Also I am going to make some OCR tests which will be more reliable to run.

[snickler]

@snickler can you test if this issue is still open on version 0.69.1?

Oh wait, was this just affecting Windows 10?

Not sure. It would make sense to test against Win11 & Win10, is it easy for you to do one of them?

Also I am going to make some OCR tests which will be more reliable to run.

Windows 11 is the easiest for me to test. I know I haven't had much of any issues using Text Extractor on Windows 11 Arm, but definitely worth revisiting just in case

[TheJoeFin]

I'll look into the best way to test on ARM with Win10

[snickler]

Confirmed it works with Windows 11. Tried with the text above.

"@snickler can you test if this issue is still open on version 0.69.1?
Oh wait, was this just affecting Windows 10?
Not sure. It would make sense to test against Winll & Win 10, is it easy for you to do one of them?
Also I am going to make some OCR tests which will be more reliable to run.
Windows 11 is the easiest for me to test. I know I haven't had much of any issues using Text Extractor on Windows 11 Arm, but
definitely worth revisiting just in case"

[marypcbuk]

I couldn't get it to work at all on Windows 10 on Arm before, will try it again later today - but it works on my Windows 11 Arm system

[marypcbuk]

so NO, 8 months on I still cannot get this to work on at all Windows 10 Arm in 0.64 or v0.69.1

repro
press Shift-Win-T
see the crosshair
select a single line of text, multiple lines of text, a single word, whatever
use Win-V to check the clipboard to see that it has not been updated
note that the cursor stays as a crosshair and the screen is still greyed out and I have to press esc to clear it
give up and use OneNote instead

[TheJoeFin]

@marypcbuk thanks for checking into that. I'm going to guess there is some blocker with the OCR engine on Windows 10. Very strange, but I don't suspect the solution is within the scope of this PowerToy. I think this issue should probably be closed unless someone else has any ideas on how to fix this.

[marypcbuk]

I'm going to guess there is some blocker with the OCR engine on Windows 10. Very strange, but I don't suspect the solution is within the scope of this PowerToy. I think this issue should probably be closed unless someone else has any ideas on how to fix this.
I don't think it gets as far as the engine - I don't think the selection box works because the cursor doesn't go back to normal. Since it works on Windows 10 x86 it might be worth raising with the Fast Track team at Microsoft who had a commitment to make anything that runs on Windows x86 run on Windows Arm - @MScalopez is this you on GitHub?

[MScalopez]

I'm going to guess there is some blocker with the OCR engine on Windows 10. Very strange, but I don't suspect the solution is within the scope of this PowerToy. I think this issue should probably be closed unless someone else has any ideas on how to fix this.
I don't think it gets as far as the engine - I don't think the selection box works because the cursor doesn't go back to normal. Since it works on Windows 10 x86 it might be worth raising with the Fast Track team at Microsoft who had a commitment to make anything that runs on Windows x86 run on Windows Arm - @MScalopez is this you on GitHub?

@marypcbuk, sorry for the late reply, unluckily it is not my Repository

[TheJoeFin]

I appreciate the attention on this issue, but for now I believe this is out of scope for Text Extractor.

A possible future workaround could be using Tesseract if it is installed. That is tracked in a different issue.

For now I am going to close this issue as won't fix.