# TRex (open-source PDF tool)

> TRex is a free, open-source PDF tool for macOS. Copy any text on your screen, stop retyping. It has 1,927 GitHub stars and is released under the MIT license. Its source code is on GitHub at amebalabs/TRex.

TRex captures any text right into your Clipboard with magic of OCR. But what is OCR anyway? Imagine you have a PDF file or a Web page where you can't select the text, image with text on it, or even a YouTube video. Forget retyping it manually; with TRex, you can extract text from anywhere, and it is as easy as taking a screenshot.

## Key facts

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Repository | https://github.com/amebalabs/TRex |
| Platforms | macOS |
| Interface | desktop GUI |
| GitHub stars | 1,927 |
| License | MIT (open source) |
| Replaces | n/a |
| Language | Swift |
| Website | https://trex.ameba.co |
| Official | yes (published by the project behind the app) |
| Category | PDF editors & tools |
| Latest release | v2.0.0 (Feb 13, 2026) |
| Last commit | Sep 29, 2026 |

## Install

### Homebrew (macOS)

```sh
brew install --cask trex
```

Package page: https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/trex

## Similar desktop apps

- [Stirling-PDF](https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/stirling-pdf): #1 PDF Application on GitHub that lets you edit PDFs on any device anywhere. (93,752 stars, MIT, official)
- [Tesseract OCR](https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/tesseract-ocr): Tesseract Open Source OCR Engine (main repository). (76,855 stars, Apache-2.0, official)
- [OCRmyPDF](https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/ocrmypdf): OCRmyPDF adds an OCR text layer to scanned PDF files, allowing them to be searched. (34,952 stars, MPL-2.0, official)
- [Koreader](https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/koreader): An ebook reader application supporting PDF, DjVu, EPUB, FB2 and many more formats, running on Cervantes, Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook and Android devices. (30,153 stars, AGPL-3.0)
- [SumatraPDF](https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/sumatrapdf): SumatraPDF is a multi-format (PDF, EPUB, MOBI, CBZ, CBR, FB2, CHM, XPS, DjVu) reader for Windows under (A)GPLv3 license, with some code under BSD license (see AUTHORS). (17,717 stars, GPL-3.0, official)
- [Xournal++](https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/xournal): Xournal++ is a handwriting notetaking software with PDF annotation support. (15,482 stars, GPL-2.0, official)

---

Canonical page: https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/trex
Source: appsgit (https://appsgit.com), the app store for github. Data from the GitHub API, refreshed nightly.
Machine access: JSON API https://appsgit.com/api/v1/apps (OpenAPI: https://appsgit.com/openapi.json), MCP server https://mcp.appsgit.com/mcp, full index https://appsgit.com/llms-full.txt.
