Copy text you can't select.

Why

Plenty of text on your screen can't be selected. A scanned document is just pixels. An error dialog won't let you highlight the message. A remote desktop window has its own clipboard. So you retype it, and get a digit wrong.

Lift reads the pixels instead. Press ⌥⌘T, drag, paste.

Where it earns its place

• Scanned PDFs with no text layer — nothing to select, so nothing to copy.
• Remote desktop sessions where the clipboard doesn't cross over.
• Error dialogs that won't let you highlight the message you need to search.
• Screenshots people send you — an address, a code, a receipt.
• Paused video — the command in a tutorial's terminal.
• Design canvases where text is artwork, not text.

macOS already has Live Text, and it's good — if the image is a file you can open in Preview, Photos or Quick Look, use that. Lift is for everything else: any region of any screen, in any app.

What it does

Installing

Lift isn't code-signed yet, so macOS will block the first launch. Until it's notarized, here's the way around it:

1. Unzip and drag Lift.app to your Applications folder.
2. Right-click the app and choose Open (double-clicking won't offer the bypass).
3. Click Open in the warning dialog. You only do this once.

If macOS still refuses, clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Lift.app

The first grab asks for Screen Recording permission — that's how macOS gates reading the screen, and every tool of this kind needs it. Grant it, then use the Restart button in the panel.