Introduced in macOS Monterey and refined in Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia, Apple’s Live Text feature uses on-device optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning to detect text inside photos, scanned receipts, video pauses, and web graphics. While exceptionally handy when extracting an address or tracking number from a picture, Live Text can become irritating during regular daily browsing.
In Safari, Preview, and Photos, hovering your cursor over an image frequently changes your standard arrow pointer into an I-beam text selector. Attempting to drag-and-drop a photo or right-click to copy an image often results in accidentally highlighting words inside the graphic instead. If you find this interference disruptive, macOS includes a system-wide toggle to disable optical text selection.
Step 1: Open System Settings
Disabling Live Text affects all native macOS applications simultaneously through your global language settings:
- Click the Apple menu () in the top-left corner of your desktop menu bar.
- Select System Settings… (or System Preferences… on macOS Monterey).
- In the left sidebar, click General.
- In the right pane, select Language & Region.
Step 2: Disable the Live Text Toggle
Scroll down to the bottom of the Language & Region configuration panel:
- Locate the option labelled Live Text (accompanied by the description: Select text in images to copy or take action).
- Toggle the switch next to Live Text to the Off position (grey).
The adjustment is instantaneous. As soon as you switch off the toggle, the background neural engine ceases scanning graphical assets for typographical characters.
Step 3: Verify the Changes in Safari and Preview
To verify that Live Text has been deactivated:
- Open Safari and navigate to any webpage containing a graphic with visible lettering or signage.
- Hover your mouse over the graphic; notice that your cursor remains a standard pointer rather than switching to a text cursor.
- Click and drag the image; macOS will now initiate standard image drag-and-drop behaviour without highlighting individual letters.
- Similarly, in the Photos app, the small Live Text detection icon in the lower-right corner of images will no longer activate.
Should you ever require OCR functionality in the future for a specific scanned document, returning to System Settings > General > Language & Region and switching the toggle back to On restores the capability immediately.