macOS
Homebrewverified · 100%
brew install tesseractprovider-native install command
brew / rank 109
Install tesseract with Homebrew
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine. Version 5.5.3 via Homebrew; verified 2026-07-25.
install
Additional install commands
overview
Package summary
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine
Project links
Commands and aliases
- ambiguous_words
- classifier_tester
- cntraining
- combine_lang_model
- combine_tessdata
- dawg2wordlist
- lstmeval
- lstmtraining
- merge_unicharsets
- mftraining
- set_unicharset_properties
- shapeclustering
- tesseract
- text2image
- unicharset_extractor
- wordlist2dawg
history
Project history and usage
Tesseract is one of the canonical open-source OCR engines and includes both libtesseract and the `tesseract` command-line program. Official docs describe an Apache-licensed OCR engine usable from the shell or through C and C++ APIs, with Unicode support, trained data for more than 100 languages, and output formats including plain text, hOCR, searchable PDF, TSV, ALTO, and PAGE.
Project history
Tesseract began as a Hewlett-Packard OCR engine developed at HP Laboratories Bristol and HP Greeley between 1985 and 1994. HP later made Windows and C++ changes, open-sourced the project in 2005, and Google developed it from 2006 until August 2017.
The modern project is maintained in the tesseract-ocr GitHub organization. The official README names Stefan Weil as current lead developer, Ray Smith as lead developer until 2017, and Zdenko Podobny as maintainer. Tesseract 4 introduced an LSTM neural-network recognizer, and version 5 became the current stable major line with release 5.0.0 on November 30, 2021.
Adoption history
Tesseract's adoption is unusually broad for a CLI package because it sits at the boundary between desktop utilities, archival workflows, library APIs, and machine-learning-era OCR. Package metadata lists it across Homebrew, Chocolatey, Debian, Fedora, MacPorts, Nix, Arch, Scoop, Ubuntu, winget, and openSUSE, reflecting long-term cross-platform demand.
How it is used
The classic package-manager usage is `tesseract imagename outputbase`, optionally adding language, OCR engine mode, page segmentation mode, and config files. Users install language data, run OCR from shell scripts, generate text or searchable PDFs, and let higher-level wrappers call libtesseract where an application needs embedded OCR.
Why package nerds care
Tesseract is a package-nerd landmark because installing it correctly is often half the battle: the engine, traineddata files, image libraries, compiler flags, and wrapper bindings must line up. It is also a rare package where command-line users, distro maintainers, data archivists, and application developers all care about the same executable.
Timeline
- 1985-1994: Hewlett-Packard develops the original Tesseract OCR engine.
- 2005: HP open-sources Tesseract.
- 2006: Official release notes list Tesseract 1.00 on June 17, 2006.
- 2006-2017: Google develops Tesseract.
- 2018: Tesseract 4.0.0 released with the LSTM-era OCR engine.
- 2021: Tesseract 5.0.0 released on November 30, 2021.
- 2025: Release notes list Tesseract 5.5.2 on December 26, 2025.
Related projects
- Tesseract is closely related to tessdata trained models, Leptonica image processing, OCRopus LSTM history, GUI front ends, language-specific wrappers, and document-processing tools that need OCR output.
Sources
- https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract official README history, maintainers, supported languages, formats, and command-line form.
- https://tesseract-ocr.github.io/tessdoc/ official user manual and 5.x documentation.
- https://tesseract-ocr.github.io/tessdoc/ReleaseNotes.html official release chronology.
- https://tesseract-ocr.github.io/tessdoc/tess4/NeuralNetsInTesseract4.00.html official LSTM subsystem overview.
- source_facts.package-manager lists broad package-manager coverage.
security posture
Risk level: orange
broad file, network, media, or database tool signal. infrastructure mutation or orchestration signal.
Risk classifier
orange risk · medium confidence · infrastructure
Why
- broad file, network, media, or database tool signal
- infrastructure mutation or orchestration signal
Signals
- text:cluster
- text:image
Install behavior
- No Homebrew bottle metadata was recorded.
Recommended review
Before unattended agent use, check whether the tool reads plaintext credentials, writes remote state, publishes artifacts, or shells out to plugins.
executables
Installed executables
| Command | Kind | Exposure | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
ambiguous_words | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
classifier_tester | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
cntraining | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
combine_lang_model | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
combine_tessdata | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
dawg2wordlist | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
lstmeval | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
lstmtraining | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
merge_unicharsets | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
mftraining | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
set_unicharset_properties | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
shapeclustering | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
tesseract | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
text2image | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
unicharset_extractor | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
wordlist2dawg | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
freshness
Version and freshness
These signals separate page generation age, package-manager activity, and upstream release comparison. Version lag is warned only when an evidence URL and comparable versions are present.
page generated2026-08-03
manager version5.5.3
manager updated2026-07-25
local dataunknown
upstreamnot available
latest detectednot detected
- okNo freshness warnings were generated.
install metadata
Package metadata
| Package key | brew:tesseract |
|---|---|
| Version | 5.5.3 |
| Package manager | Homebrew |
| Homepage | https://tesseract-ocr.github.io/ |
| Repository | https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract |
| Last updated | 2026-07-25T00:56:36Z |
| Pulse | updated |
| Bottle | not recorded |
| Service | none declared |
source trail
Generated from repository data
This page is generated by av-web from the private package SQLite artifact built by scripts/generate-pkg-sqlite.py.
Combined YAML source
View the package source record on GitHub.
Used sources
- Geiger risk classifier
- Nucleus package database
- curated package history
- pkgdb category and tag curation