Make scanned PDFs searchable with local OCR. Choose a recognition language, inspect extracted text and download image pages with a selectable text layer.
OCR adds recognized text to the page appearance; it does not establish that recognition is correct.
Test a distinctive phrase with your PDF reader’s search command and compare copied names and numbers against the scan.
Rebuilding pages does not retain original form fields, links, annotations or digital signatures.
Add a searchable text layer to a scanned PDF. Each page is rendered locally, recognized with the selected OCR language and rebuilt with its page image and an invisible text layer. This enables searching and selecting recognized words in compatible PDF readers.
Choose English, Spanish, French, German or Arabic according to the document. Worker, engine and language files download when needed, while the document is processed on your device. OCR quality depends on image clarity, page orientation, font size, language and document structure. Handwriting, columns, stamps and damaged originals can produce incorrect reading order or characters.
This workflow rebuilds up to thirty PDF pages rather than preserving the original document’s interactive structure. Forms, annotations, links and digital signatures are not retained. The result keeps the original page dimensions, with page imagery rendered to a bounded resolution. Review names, dates, identifiers and financial figures against the source before relying on recognized text.
Use a PDF up to fifty megabytes and thirty pages. Split a longer document first.
Choose the recognition language that matches the page text before starting.
Press Make PDF searchable and follow page progress. Cancel OCR if you need to stop.
Read the recognized text preview, download the PDF and test search and text selection in your PDF reader.
Keeps page appearance as a rendered image with recognized words in a text layer.
Loads the selected recognition resources when required.
Displays recognized content so obvious OCR errors can be identified.
Add recognition to short document batches so keywords can be found in a PDF reader.
Create a text layer before trying PDF to Excel on an image-only report.
Recognize the page, then compare copied text with the image before quoting it.
Choose the PDF and its language, run recognition and download the searchable result.
No. Text extraction reads an existing text layer. OCR recognizes characters from page images and creates a new layer.
The document is processed in your browser. Recognition engine and selected language assets still need to download.
No. The document is rebuilt from page images and OCR text, so original signatures, forms, links and annotations are not preserved.
Low resolution, skew, faint ink, handwriting or an incorrect language can reduce recognition accuracy. Check important values against the source.
Yes. Cancel OCR terminates the current worker. The original PDF is not changed.
Drop files here or click to browse — processing stays on your device
Up to 30 pages and 50 MB. Each page is rendered to an image with an invisible selectable text layer. Original interactive forms, links, annotations and digital signatures are not preserved. OCR can misread text and handwriting. Worker, engine and selected language assets download when needed; document bytes stay on your device.
