OCR PDF
Scanned pages are only pictures of text. OCR reads them, so you can search, select and copy the words, while every page keeps looking exactly the same.
or drop it here
Files never leave your device · Free, no sign-up · No watermark
How to make a scanned PDF searchable
- Choose or drop the scanned PDF.
- Pick the language of the document.
- Select Make searchable and save the new PDF.
What changes in the PDF
An invisible layer of text is placed exactly over the words on each page. The page images are not changed or recompressed, so the file looks the same; now your PDF reader can search it, and you can select and copy text. Pages that already contain text are skipped.
Accuracy
Clean, straight scans at 300 DPI give the best results. Handwriting, very small print, and photos taken at an angle are harder to read. Choose the document's language for the best accuracy; English can be recognized alongside it.
Questions about OCR PDF
Are my files uploaded when I use OCR?
No. The text recognition (Tesseract, compiled to WebAssembly) runs inside your browser tab. Your PDF is read from your disk, recognized on your device and saved back to it. Only the recognition model for your language is downloaded from this site the first time; your document never goes anywhere.
Which languages can it read?
English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Greek, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, Hebrew, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.
Why is the first run slower?
The recognition model for your language (usually 1 to 4 MB) is downloaded once from this site and kept in your browser, so later runs start straight away.
Will the file look different?
No. The original pages are kept as they are; only invisible text is added on top.
Can I just get the text?
Yes. Make the PDF searchable first, then use PDF to Text to save its text as a .txt file.