Gray circle on all my iPhone 12 Pro Mac screenshots

That is Live Text symbol, see this Apple article: Use Live Text to get information in photos and images

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212630

How can I remove it?

You can turn in Off.

To turn on Live Text for all supported languages, go to Settings > General > Language & Region -> turn Live Text ON or OFF.

do you ever ship trackable things via USPS? If you do then take a photo of it. You can then tap that icon and tap on the tracking number and voilà! You are getting a tracking update.

Thats just one of the gazillion things I'm sure you can do with it.

Or just don't use it. I'm not being facetious, just offering an opinion.

jeff

That is a new ios15 icon that allows you to select text from the image for copying. It is not part of the screenshot itself.

I don't think you can. Some team probably spent $millions developing a method of copying text from photos. Ignore it or don't screenshot anything with text in it.

Did you tap on it, by the way? You will see what it is for.

Well found, Raicya, I saw it in beta testing then promptly forgot about it!

Absolutely JeffT!

you're welcome.