Make a scanned PDF searchable
Run optical character recognition over a scanned document and add a hidden text layer, so the pages look exactly the same but the words become searchable, selectable and copyable.
Runs in your browser — this file is never uploaded
or drop a file here
Recognition runs on your device. Scanned documents are never uploaded.
How to make a scanned PDF searchable
- 1Open your scanned PDFAny PDF whose pages are pictures rather than text. If you can't select the text in your reader, this is the tool.
- 2Start recognitionThe recognition engine downloads once, then reads each page on your own processor. A progress bar shows where it is.
- 3Download the searchable PDFThe page images are untouched; an invisible text layer is added on top, aligned to the words.
When you would use this
Every scanned document is effectively a picture until it has been through OCR: old contracts, archived invoices, book pages, anything that came off a flatbed scanner or a phone camera. Making them searchable is what turns a folder of scans into something you can actually find things in. Doing it locally matters here more than almost anywhere else, because scanned documents tend to be the sensitive ones.
Questions about OCR PDF
- Are my files uploaded to a server?
- No. Every tool on this site runs inside your browser. Your file is read from your disk into your own browser's memory, processed there, and written back out. You can confirm this yourself: open your browser's developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and run the tool — you will not see your document being sent anywhere. It also means the tools keep working if you go offline after the page has loaded.
- Why is it slower than an online OCR service?
- Because it is running on your device rather than on a rack of servers. Expect a few seconds per page. The trade is straightforward: slower, but your scanned documents are never sent to anyone.
- Does it change how my document looks?
- No. The original page images are kept exactly as they are and the recognised text is added as an invisible layer behind them. The document looks identical and is now searchable.
- How accurate is it?
- On a clean, straight, reasonably high-resolution scan of printed text, accuracy is high. It falls off with low resolution, skewed pages, heavy background noise, unusual fonts and handwriting — handwriting in particular is not reliably recognised. Scanning at 300 DPI makes far more difference than any setting here.