Newbee OCR CLI
A command-line OCR tool built on ocr-rs 2.3.1. The default binary embeds PP-OCRv6 tiny, so basic OCR works without a separate model download. PP-OCRv6 small, medium, and legacy/script-specific models are downloaded from GitHub on demand when local files are missing.
Install
Homebrew (macOS and Linux)
brew install zibo-chen/tap/nbocr
WinGet (Windows)
winget install --id ChenZibo.NewbeeOCRCLI --exact
Debian and Ubuntu
sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://zibo-chen.github.io/nbocr-packages/keys/nbocr.asc \
-o /etc/apt/keyrings/nbocr.asc
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/nbocr.asc] https://zibo-chen.github.io/nbocr-packages/apt stable main" \
| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nbocr.list >/dev/null
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nbocr
Fedora, RHEL, Rocky Linux, and compatible distributions
sudo curl -fsSL https://zibo-chen.github.io/nbocr-packages/nbocr.repo \
-o /etc/yum.repos.d/nbocr.repo
sudo dnf install nbocr
Installer scripts
macOS and Linux:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf \
https://github.com/zibo-chen/newbee-ocr-cli/releases/latest/download/newbee_ocr_cli-installer.sh | sh
Windows PowerShell:
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://github.com/zibo-chen/newbee-ocr-cli/releases/latest/download/newbee_ocr_cli-installer.ps1 | iex"
Build
cd newbee_ocr_cli
cargo build --release
The binary is written to target/release/nbocr.
Quick Use
Default embedded PP-OCRv6 tiny:
nbocr r image.png
Use another v6 tier. Missing files are downloaded into --models-dir or ./models:
nbocr r document.jpg -d v6-small -l ja
nbocr r document.jpg -d v6-medium -l fr -f json
Batch:
nbocr b ./images --recursive -f jsonl -o results.jsonl
PP-OCRv6 Support
Use -d v6-tiny, -d v6-small, or -d v6-medium. The CLI automatically pairs detection with the matching v6 recognition model.
PP-OCRv6 is not one model per language. Each v6 tier uses one multilingual recognition model plus its tier-specific charset:
| Tier | Detection | Recognition | Charset | Language scope |
|---|
v6-tiny | PP-OCRv6_tiny_det.mnn | PP-OCRv6_tiny_rec.mnn | ppocr_keys_v6_tiny.txt | Chinese, English, and the official Latin-script set; Japanese excluded |
v6-small | PP-OCRv6_small_det.mnn | PP-OCRv6_small_rec.mnn | ppocr_keys_v6_small.txt | Official 50 v6 recognition languages |
v6-medium | PP-OCRv6_medium_det.mnn | PP-OCRv6_medium_rec.mnn | ppocr_keys_v6_medium.txt | Official 50 v6 recognition languages |
-l, --language validates the requested language and keeps output/config explicit; for v6 it does not select a separate language-specific recognition file.
Korean, Cyrillic, Arabic, Devanagari, Thai, Greek, Tamil, and Telugu should use PP-OCRv5 script-specific recognition models.
Model Files
The default v6 tiny files are embedded by default. Other missing files are downloaded from:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zibo-chen/ocr-rs/v2.3.1/models/
Download target:
--models-dir when provided../models otherwise.
Already-downloaded files are reused.
To install converted Paddle models manually:
python ../ocr-rs/script/convert_paddle_to_mnn.py \
--ocr-dir /path/to/paddle/inference/models \
--install-dir ./models
Commands
Inspect models:
nbocr list
nbocr list --detailed
nbocr info v6-small
Important options:
| Option | Description |
|---|
-m, --models-dir | Model directory and auto-download target |
-d, --det-model | v4, v5, v5-fp16, v6-tiny, v6-small, v6-medium |
-l, --language | Language/model alias, for example zh, en, ja, fr, arabic |
-f, --format | text, json, or jsonl |
--gpu | metal, opencl, vulkan, or cuda |
--timing | Print timing information |
Embedded Models
The default feature set embeds PP-OCRv6 tiny. Optional features can embed additional models into the binary.
cargo build --release --features "embed-det-v6-small,embed-rec-v6-small"
Available v6 embed features:
embed-det-v6-tiny
embed-det-v6-small
embed-det-v6-medium
embed-rec-v6-tiny
embed-rec-v6-small
embed-rec-v6-medium
License
Apache-2.0