# Install tesseract with Homebrew

OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine. Version 5.5.3 via Homebrew; verified 2026-07-25.

## Install

```sh
sudo av install brew:tesseract
```

Additional install commands:

### macOS

- Homebrew (100%):

```sh
brew install tesseract
```

  Evidence: provider-native install command

## Package facts

- **Package key:** brew:tesseract
- **Package manager:** Homebrew
- **Version:** 5.5.3
- **Source summary:** OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine
- **Homepage:** <https://tesseract-ocr.github.io/>
- **Repository:** <https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract>
- **Last updated:** 2026-07-25T00:56:36Z
- **Generated:** 2026-08-03T00:40:33+00:00

## Executables

- ambiguous_words (alias)
- classifier_tester (alias)
- cntraining (alias)
- combine_lang_model (alias)
- combine_tessdata (alias)
- dawg2wordlist (alias)
- lstmeval (alias)
- lstmtraining (alias)
- merge_unicharsets (alias)
- mftraining (alias)
- set_unicharset_properties (alias)
- shapeclustering (alias)
- tesseract (alias)
- text2image (alias)
- unicharset_extractor (alias)
- wordlist2dawg (alias)

## Install behavior

- Bottle: not available

## Freshness

- Page generated: 2026-08-03
- Package-manager version: 5.5.3
## 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 Notes

broad file, network, media, or database tool signal. infrastructure mutation or orchestration signal.

- **Geiger risk:** orange / medium
- broad file, network, media, or database tool signal
- infrastructure mutation or orchestration signal


## Combined YAML source

View the package source record on GitHub. [combined/tesseract.yml](https://github.com/automic-vault/db/blob/main/combined/tesseract.yml)


## Sources

- Nucleus package database
- Geiger risk classifier
- curated package history
- pkgdb category and tag curation