How it works
Every page is drawn as a sharp image and read by an OCR engine that runs inside your browser. The words it finds are written into the page as invisible text, placed and sized to sit over the printed words. Your original pages are kept as they are, so the file looks the same, but now you can press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F to find a word, select a paragraph, or copy a table into a spreadsheet.
Getting good results
- Choose the language the document is written in, so accents and special letters are read correctly.
- Use Thorough for small print, faint copies and dense pages. Quick is fine for clear, large text.
- Straight, printed text works best. Handwriting is not supported.
- Pages that already contain real text are skipped by default, so mixed documents are not read twice.
Privacy
The OCR engine and its language data are downloaded to your browser once, and every page is read right here. Your PDF is never uploaded, and the searchable copy is saved straight to your device.