Add an OCR text layer to scanned PDFs so you can search and copy text. Runs entirely in your browser.
Searchable PDF
Processing…
FREE
Loading…
Drop a scanned PDF here
or click to browse · PDF only
OCR takes ~5–15 seconds per page. The output PDF looks identical but supports Ctrl+F search.
PDF OCR Search solves a specific problem that's different from extracting text out of an image: it doesn't give you plain text as the output at all — it gives you back the same PDF, visually unchanged, but now with an invisible layer of recognized text sitting behind every scanned page. That distinction matters. A scanned PDF — one produced by a flatbed scanner, a photocopier with a scan-to-PDF function, or a phone scanning app — is really just a sequence of page images wrapped in a PDF container. It looks like a document, but to a computer it's indistinguishable from a stack of photographs: there's no underlying text for Ctrl+F to search, no characters to select and copy, and no way for a screen reader to read it aloud. This tool fixes exactly that, without touching what the document looks like.
The technique is called a "hidden text layer" or sometimes an "invisible OCR layer," and it's the same approach used by dedicated desktop scanning software and enterprise document-capture systems. Each page image is analyzed with OCR to recognize not just what the words are, but precisely where each word sits on the page — its bounding box coordinates. A new PDF page is then constructed with the original scanned image placed exactly as before, and the recognized text is drawn on top of it at matching coordinates but rendered fully transparent, at zero opacity. The visual result is identical to the original scan pixel-for-pixel, but every PDF viewer, browser, and search index now sees selectable, searchable characters lined up precisely under the corresponding image content — meaning if you double-click a word, you select the actual recognized word, not an arbitrary region of image pixels.
This is a genuinely different job from this site's Image to Text and Scan to Text tools, both of which are built to output plain text you can copy elsewhere. PDF OCR Search is for the opposite instinct: you want to keep the document exactly as it is — the original scan, the original layout, possibly a signature or letterhead you need preserved visually — but you want to be able to find a name, a clause, or a date inside a fifty-page scanned contract without reading every page manually. It's the tool for archives, legal document review, and any workflow where the scanned image itself is the record of truth, and searchability is simply a convenience layered on top of it.
Because OCR analysis has to run once per page, processing time scales with document length — Tesseract, the open-source OCR engine (originally built at HP, now maintained with Google's backing) that powers this tool, typically needs a few seconds per page for clean, well-scanned text, meaning a ten-page document usually finishes in under a minute and a hundred-page archive can take several minutes. All of that computation happens inside your browser tab via WebAssembly; the scanned document, which is very often something sensitive — a signed contract, a medical record, a government form — is never uploaded to a server at any point in the process.
Each page of the uploaded PDF is first rendered to a high-resolution canvas image using PDF.js, preserving the exact visual appearance of the scan. That rendered image is then passed to Tesseract.js, a WebAssembly build of the Tesseract OCR engine, which recognizes not only the text content but the precise bounding-box coordinates of every word on the page. A new PDF page is then assembled: the original rendered image is placed as the visible background exactly as before, and the recognized words are drawn on top at their matching coordinates using a fully transparent (zero-opacity) text-rendering mode — invisible to the eye, but selectable, searchable, and copyable to any PDF reader or browser's text layer. This process repeats page by page until the full document has an invisible text layer aligned to its original scanned images, and the finished PDF is assembled and offered for download — all without any page ever leaving your browser tab.
Upload your scanned PDF
Drop a scanned or image-based PDF onto the upload zone. The file loads entirely in your browser.
Run OCR
Click "Run OCR". The tool uses Tesseract.js to recognize text in each page image and extract it.
Search the extracted text
Use the search box to find keywords across all OCR'd pages instantly. Matching results are highlighted.
Copy or export text
Copy the recognized text to your clipboard for use in other documents, or export the text layer as a plain text file.
Download searchable PDF (optional)
Generate a searchable PDF with an invisible text layer overlaid on the original scanned pages for future use.
Scanned Contracts & Agreements
Make scanned legal contracts searchable so you can jump straight to a specific clause, party name, or date without reading every page.
Institutional Archives
Convert old scanned records, meeting minutes, or historical archives into searchable PDFs while keeping the original scanned appearance intact.
Academic & Research Papers
OCR scanned journal articles and older research papers so citations, author names, and key terms become searchable and copyable.
Receipts & Invoice Audits
Make batches of scanned receipts and invoices text-searchable for faster expense tracking, reconciliation, and audit trails.
News & Media Clippings
Convert scanned newspaper or magazine clippings into searchable PDFs for press monitoring and citation research.
Government & Compliance Forms
Enable text search across scanned forms and applications so compliance teams can locate specific fields without manual review.
Precise, Position-Matched Text Layer
Recognized words are placed at the exact coordinates of the original text, so selecting a word in the output selects the right word, not an arbitrary region.
100% Browser-Based OCR
Page rendering, Tesseract recognition, and PDF reassembly all run in your browser via WebAssembly — confidential scanned documents are never uploaded to any server.
Visually Unchanged Output
The finished PDF looks pixel-identical to the original scan — signatures, letterheads, and layout are fully preserved, with searchability added invisibly underneath.
Works in Any Standard PDF Viewer
The searchable PDF output requires no proprietary plugin — Ctrl+F search and copy-paste work in Adobe Reader, Chrome, Preview, and every other standard viewer.
No File Size Limits
Process documents of any length locally in your browser without a server-side upload cap, though longer documents take proportionally longer to OCR.
Free to Start — Sign Up for More
Use free with no account for standard file sizes. Sign up free to raise your limit to 80 MB, or upgrade to Pro for 250 MB per file.
Also Known As
Image to Text
Extract text from JPG, PNG and other images using OCR technology.
Scan to Text
Take a photo of any document and instantly extract the text with OCR.
Merge PDF
Combine multiple PDF files into one. Drag to set the page order you want.
Split PDF
Separate one PDF into multiple files — by page range or every page.
Compress PDF
Reduce PDF file size while keeping the best possible quality.
Remove Pages
Select and delete specific pages from your PDF document.
Trusted Worldwide
iLoveDocsTools is used by students, professionals, and businesses across the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, India, and more than 100 other countries. All tools are browser-based and process files privately — your files never leave your device. Free to use, with Pro plans for unlimited access.
All processing happens directly in your browser. Your documents are never sent to any server — complete privacy guaranteed for users in the USA, Canada, UK, and worldwide.
Every tool on iLoveDocsTools is free to use. Need more? Upgrade to Pro for unlimited usage, priority access, and no daily limits. Trusted by students, freelancers, and teams across North America and Europe.
Whether you are on a Mac, Windows PC, iPhone, or Android in New York, Toronto, London, or Sydney — our tools work instantly in any modern browser.
Looking for free PDF tools in the USA? Free document converters in Canada? Online PDF editors in the UK or Australia? iLoveDocsTools offers 70+ free tools — merge PDF, split PDF, compress PDF, convert Word to PDF, Excel to PDF, JPG to PDF, and many more — all free, all instant, all private. No watermarks. No file size limits. Just free tools that work.