OCR PDF — Make Scans Searchable
Scanned PDFs are just pictures of pages — you cannot search, copy, or quote a single word. This tool renders every page in your browser, recognizes the text with the Tesseract OCR engine, and overlays the result as an invisible text layer on the untouched original pages. The output looks identical but becomes fully searchable and selectable. Everything runs locally on your device: recognition is CPU-intensive, so large documents can take a while to process — but even the most confidential scans are never uploaded anywhere.
Choose files ordrag & drop here
.pdf · single file
Processed locally in your browser — your files never leave your device.
How to ocr pdf
- Upload the scanned PDF you want to make searchable.
- Pick the document language for the best recognition accuracy.
- Click "Run OCR" — large files take longer — then download the searchable PDF.
Frequently asked questions
Why does OCR take so long on big files?
Every page is rendered and recognized locally on your device — no server helps out. That keeps the document private, but large files or high page counts take noticeably longer.
Will the recognized text be perfect?
Accuracy depends on scan quality and language. Clean, straight, high-resolution scans in the selected language recognize best; handwriting is not supported.
Does the document look different afterwards?
No. The original page images stay untouched — the recognized words are added as an invisible text layer, so the file only gains search and copy abilities.