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OCR PDF.

A scanned document is just a picture — you can’t select, search or copy a word of it. OCR (optical character recognition) reads the letters out of that picture and lays an invisible, selectable text layer over the page, so the result behaves like a real document: searchable, copyable, and readable by screen readers. This runs Tesseract, the long-established open-source OCR engine, compiled to WebAssembly and served from this site. Your document never leaves your device.

⚠ OCR reads text from the page image and adds an invisible, selectable layer over it; the visible page stays as the scan. Accuracy depends on scan quality, and the first run downloads a ~6 MB English engine (after that it works offline).

Drop a scanned PDF or an image here, or browse

Files stay on your device — nothing is uploaded.
i. Drop a scanned PDF or an image (PNG or JPG) onto the box above.
ii. Each page is read by Tesseract running as WebAssembly in your browser — the first run downloads the ~6 MB English engine, then it works offline.
iii. An invisible text layer is placed over the original page image, exactly where the words are.
iv. Download a searchable PDF. Nothing was uploaded.
More tools: PDF to imagesCompress PDFOrganize PDF

Read the guide: How to Make a Scanned PDF Searchable (OCR) Without Uploading It

Frequently asked questions

Is my document uploaded for OCR?

No. Recognition runs entirely in your browser via Tesseract compiled to WebAssembly, and the engine and language data are served from this site, not a third party. Once the engine has downloaded once, it works with Wi-Fi off.

What does “searchable PDF” mean?

The page still looks like your scan, but an invisible text layer sits on top of it. You can select, copy and search the text, and screen readers can read it — while the visible page is unchanged.

Why is the first run slow?

The first OCR downloads the ~6 MB English engine and language data, and recognising a page is CPU-intensive. Later runs reuse the cached engine, and a plain image is much faster than a long multi-page scan.

Which languages are supported?

English today. The tool ships the English model so it stays self-contained and private; more languages can be added the same way.

Embed this tool

Add this free, no-upload tool to your own site with one line:

<iframe src="https://fileanvil.com/embed/ocr-pdf/" width="100%" height="480" style="border:1px solid #ddd;border-radius:12px" title="OCR PDF — Make a Scanned PDF Searchable"></iframe>