OCR PDF · Make a Scan Searchable
Turn a scanned PDF or photos of documents into a PDF you can search, select and copy. The pages stay exactly as they are; the recognised text is laid invisibly over every word.
How to make a scanned PDF searchable
- Drop a scanned PDF, or photos of the pages, onto the box above.
- Choose the language or languages of the document, main language first.
- Click Make searchable. Each page is recognised in your browser; you can stop at any time and keep the pages that are done.
- Save the searchable PDF, and the plain text if you want to paste it somewhere.
The pages stay untouched
The tool does not re-render or recompress your scan. It adds an invisible text layer to the original PDF, with every word placed and stretched to cover the word in the picture, the same technique professional scanning software uses. Search, selection and copy then line up with what you see, and the file grows only slightly. Bookmarks, form fields and other content are kept.
Check what was recognised
After recognition, "show recognised text" marks every word on the page: green where the engine was confident, amber where it was unsure and red where it probably got it wrong. Hover a word to see what was read. Nobody else shows you this before you rely on the text.
Smart about mixed documents
Pages that already contain real text, such as a typed cover letter in front of scanned attachments, are skipped so their text is not duplicated. Sideways and upside-down pages are detected and, if you like, turned upright. Large scans are processed page by page, with two engines in parallel on computers.
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is it?
Very good on clean scans at 300 dpi; weaker on blurry phone photos, handwriting and very small print. The recognised-text view shows where to double-check.
Is my document uploaded?
No. The OCR engine and language data are downloaded once from this site and cached by your browser; your document never leaves your device.