The Text Detection API is a subset of the Shape Detection API which provides the ability to detect and optionally transcribe text in an image provided by script. The image may come from any type of image buffer source such as an <image>, <video> or <canvas> tag.
Native platforms such as Android, iOS, macOS and Windows include built-in libraries for performing text detection and optical character recognition (OCR) in images. The availability of these libraries means that developers do not need to design this functionality themselves or include a large third party OCR library in their application download. This API provides these same benefits to the web platform where it is available on native.
Docs: https://web.dev/shape-detection/ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QeCDBOoxkElAB0x7ZpM3VN3TQjS1ub1mejevd2Ik1gQ/edit
Samples: https://paul.kinlan.me/detecting-text-in-an-image/ https://web.dev/shape-detection/#textdetector
Explainers: https://github.com/WICG/shape-detection-api/blob/master/README.md