From screen to memory,
in one shortcut.
Each step removes friction from the one before it — so reading turns into remembering without breaking your flow. Here is the whole loop, and exactly what it does with your screen.
Press the shortcut
Rest the cursor near a word and press the shortcut — default ⌥E. macOS's on-device text recognition (OCR) tries to read the word and the sentence around it in whatever you're reading: articles, PDFs, subtitles, images, text you can't select. It often gets both; sometimes just the word, and you fill the rest.
Want to be exact? Select and copy first, then press the shortcut — the clipboard path, triggered by you, never background monitoring. A fleeting overlay shows the word, the learning language, the explanation, and your sentence. You edit or fix the word, then press Enter to save.
Meaning, in its context
A concise core meaning + part of speech, shown in the preview when it's ready — your save never waits on it. Behind a calm expand: the word's distinct senses (the noun vs the verb) and per-POS pronunciation.
A Dictionary button hands off to the macOS system dictionary for the exhaustive entry. And when you want it, an optional in-context explanation — the word as used in your sentence — free up to 10 a day.
Before they fade
Saved words become spaced-repetition (FSRS) cards, fronted by your own sentence with the word highlighted. Rate Forget Hard Good Easy and the schedule returns each word just before you'd forget it.
Today you review on your Mac. The phone review companion is coming — your words sync to it, so idle minutes on the go become review minutes.
What you need.
A Mac you read on. Requires macOS 14 or later; the Mac app is a directly notarized download.
Built first for English. Other languages can still be captured, saved, and reviewed today — generated explanations expand after quality validation. Never English-only.
Capture is Mac-only today; you already review on the Mac. Phone review is coming; mobile capture is a later add.
Keyboard-first, and forgiving.
Two fields. One keystroke to save.
The word, and your sentence. Tab moves between them, Enter saves, Esc dismisses. If OCR or the clipboard grabbed the wrong token, correct the word inline; change the learning language inline too.
Only the word is required — the sentence is optional, and a context-less save is fine.
Text recognition runs only when you press the shortcut. The full model is on the privacy page →
Why capture needs a screen-recording permission.
To turn the word under your cursor into text, Capecho uses macOS's built-in on-device text recognition (the OCR behind Live Text). macOS gates that pixel access behind a permission it labels Screen Recording — but Capecho never records or streams: the system reads the pixels at the instant you press the shortcut and returns only the recognized text — the screen image never reaches Capecho (best-effort, you edit before saving).
- ·On-device OCR, only at the instant you press the shortcut.
- ·Never continuous, never in the background.
- ·The system returns only the recognized text — the screen image never reaches Capecho, so there's nothing to upload.
- ·Only the word + the context you keep + its explanation + your review history.
- ·The small settings that ride along — your learning / explanation language.
- ·Synced to your private account so you can review across devices. Nothing else from your screen.
Copy/paste mode still works: select and copy, then press the shortcut. Capecho reads the copied selection only after you press it — never clipboard monitoring. A deliberate reduced mode, not a weakened fallback.
Download Capecho for Mac.
Capture a word the moment you meet it, understand it in a popover without breaking your flow, and echo it back right before you'd forget — no deck-building, and the core loop stays free.
- On-device OCR
- Free core loop
- Anki & CSV export
Available now on Mac — the iPhone review companion is coming.