Extracting text from image in macOS from the CLI

Newer versions of macOS has the VNRecognizeTextRequest API. However, I can't find an easy-to-install tool that lets me use this API in a command line. However, this can be worked around thanks to the fact that:

• The Shortcuts app offers the "Extract text from image" action.
• Shortcuts can be run from the command line and can output its result via stdout.

Setting up a shortcut

First, create a shortcut like this:

• Name the shortcut Extract Text
• At the right, under Details, check the following boxes:
  • Use as Quick Action
  • Provide Output
• In the workflow, add the following actions:
  • Receive Images input from Quick Actions
  • Extract text from Shortcut Input
  • Stop and output Text from Image

Invoking the shortcut

Then, run the shortcut like this:

shortcuts run 'Extract Text' -i <path/to/image.png> | cat

The | cat is required to make the shortcuts CLI output the result to stdout. Otherwise, it will not output anything.