Make PDF searchable
Scanned PDFs are just pictures, so you cannot select or search their text. This tool recognises the text on every page and overlays an invisible layer that follows the original layout, so the pages look the same but the words become selectable and searchable.
Open Make PDF searchable tool Runs in your browser - files are never uploadedHow to use it
- Add a scanned or image-only PDF.
- Choose the document language and output quality.
- Run the tool, then preview and download the searchable PDF.
Frequently asked questions
Are my files uploaded?
No. Pages are rendered with PDF.js and recognised with Tesseract.js (WebAssembly) locally in your browser. On the first run the OCR engine and language data download from a CDN and are then cached.
Which languages are supported?
English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish. These use scripts that can be embedded in the invisible text layer; other scripts are skipped and reported.
Does it keep the original look?
Yes. Each page keeps its size and orientation and is drawn as the page background, with the recognised words placed invisibly on top. Because pages are rasterised, vector text that was already selectable is replaced by an image plus the new text layer.
Is the recognised text always accurate?
No. OCR accuracy depends on scan quality and resolution. Clean, straight, high-contrast scans work best.