HN Hall of Fame
Weekly email

Show HN: Tesseract.js – Pure JavaScript OCR for 60 Languages

github.com Software & code Software projects AI & data Candidate
Visit original Best HN thread
Report a link problem
Reports are reviewed before any public record is updated.

Screenshot of github.com captured 2026-07-20
Page preview · captured 2026-07-20

Resurfaced independently across 2 calendar years, with breakout response in 2 of them.

submissions
3
submitters
3
observed span
2016–2022
peak thread · 97 comments
727 pts
latest 20+ return · 2022-05-09
146 pts

Submission timeline

2007–2026

One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.

First comments on top threads

HN comment order

To anyone screen capturing small fonts as a demonstration, or capturing digital text especially at a small resolution, I don't believe that that is the purpose of this OCR library. (As a specialized problem, that might be easier to solve depending on the typeface.) A much better example that works quite well is a picture of someone holding a book: http://i.imgur.com/3JWs64x.jpg Magic . Read this to yourself. Read it silently Don't move your lips. Don’t make a suund Listen to…

xigency·727-point thread·

I'm surprised that seemingly there are no other major FOSS OCRs than Tesseract and Tesseract is quite frankly horrible. I once tried to use it on a high-resolution screenshot of a Discord message containing only the characters "0" and "1". I cropped it to only have the text, restricted character sets, tried fiddling with the images contrast and what not and the result was still quite poor, with many characters mistaken or straight up ignored. I have little expertise in…

miav·146-point thread·

Very cool! It'd be fun to link this up to a translator api. I think they already have an app that does that. But it would still be fun to build.

The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.

Breakout years
2

100+ points or 50+ comments

Total points
879

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Total comments
158

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Every submission

DateTitle as submittedByPointsComments
2016-10-02Pure JavaScript OCR for 62 Languagesvoaie61
2016-10-12Show HN: Tesseract.js – Pure JavaScript OCR for 60 LanguagesFirst breakout · Best threadbijection72797
2022-05-09Tesseract.js wraps an Emscripten port of the Tesseract OCR EngineLatest 20+ point returnmodinfo14660