Last Updated on April 10, 2026
Rescribe is an easy-to-use desktop tool for performing optical character recognition (OCR) on image files, PDFs and Google Books.
It uses the Tesseract OCR engine, combined with modern and efficient preprocessing and analysis pipelines, to produce high quality output. The tool has been built with a focus on OCR of historical printed works, but it includes modern language options and also works well on modern printed works.
Simply choose a source – a folder, PDF file or Google Book –, select the appropriate language/script from the dropdown and hit “Start OCR”.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- PDF extractor.
- Google Book downloader – specify the Book ID / URL.
- Support for PDFs with embedded rotated images.
- Support for embedded CCITT images.
- Includes the OCR engine (Tesseract).
- Cross-platform support – runs under Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: rescribe.xyz/rescribe
Support: Git Repositories
Developer: Rescribe
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Rescribe is written in Go. Learn Go with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |

