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OCR PDF

Recognize text inside scanned PDFs so it becomes searchable and copyable.

A scanned PDF is a photograph of a page. It looks like a document but contains no text, which is why searching it finds nothing and copying gives you nothing. OCR reads the shapes in the image, recognises characters and adds an invisible text layer behind the picture, so the page still looks identical while becoming searchable and selectable.

Recognition runs entirely in the browser using Tesseract compiled to WebAssembly. The first run downloads the language model for the language you pick; after that it is cached.

How it works

  1. Open the scanned PDF or image.
  2. Choose the language of the text — accuracy depends heavily on this.
  3. Run recognition and wait; a page takes a few seconds.
  4. Download the searchable PDF with its text layer.

What people use it for

  • Making an archive of scanned invoices searchable by supplier name.
  • Preparing a scan for conversion to Word, which needs a real text layer.
  • Quoting from a scanned book chapter without retyping it.

Frequently asked questions

Is my file uploaded to a server?
No. The file is opened by JavaScript and WebAssembly running inside your own browser tab. It is never uploaded, there is no server-side processing and nothing is stored — closing the tab discards everything.
Why is recognition slow?
Because it is genuinely running on your device rather than on a server farm. Expect a few seconds per page, more on a phone. The trade-off is that the document never leaves the machine.
The recognised text has mistakes.
OCR accuracy depends on scan quality. Aim for at least 300 dpi, straight pages and good contrast. Choosing the wrong language is the most common cause of poor results, followed by skewed or shadowed phone photos.
Does the page look different afterwards?
No. The original image is kept and the recognised text is placed invisibly behind it, so the appearance is unchanged.

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