Add search without flattening pages
Scanned pages receive an invisible text layer aligned to recognized text. The visible page remains the original PDF content.
PDF tool
Searchable OCR PDF
Make scanned and image-only PDF pages searchable with an invisible English text layer, entirely in your browser.
Make a scanned PDF searchable
English OCR, local processing. The original page graphics, dimensions, and rotation are retained. An invisible text layer is added only to image-only pages. Search accuracy and text alignment depend on scan clarity, typography, and orientation.
Select, process, download
- Select one PDF.
- Choose Make PDF searchable.
- Wait while image-only pages are recognized.
- Download and search the completed PDF.
OCR only where needed
Pages with usable selectable text are left untouched. OCR starts lazily for scanned pages and its workers are reused for the document.
Clean English scans work best
Faint text, handwriting, unusual fonts, perspective distortion, and complex graphics can reduce recognition quality or alignment.
Helpful answers
Searchable PDF FAQs
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. PDF inspection, page rendering, OCR, text-layer placement, and final PDF creation happen in your browser. OCR language data may download when needed, but your PDF is not uploaded.
Does this change how the PDF looks?
The original PDF pages remain in place. The tool adds invisible selectable text over scanned pages, so visual appearance should remain effectively unchanged.
Are existing text pages OCRed again?
No. Pages with a usable text layer are preserved without OCR or rasterization. This also supports PDFs containing a mix of text pages and scanned pages.
Which OCR languages are supported?
This first version recognizes English. Other languages and handwriting are not currently supported.
Will search text align perfectly?
Alignment is approximate and depends on scan clarity, rotation, perspective, and OCR accuracy. Clean, straight document scans work best.