GuidesOCR a scanned PDF privately (make it searchable)
OCR a scanned PDF privately (make it searchable)
Add a searchable text layer to image-only PDFs in your browser. No upload — for IDs, archives, and paper scans.
Why scanned PDFs are not searchable
A flatbed or phone scan is usually a picture of a page. Without OCR, Find fails, you cannot copy text, and accessibility tools see no words. Cloud OCR tools solve that by uploading the scan. Local OCR runs recognition on your device and embeds an invisible text layer in the download.
Step-by-step with PDFQuietly
Open OCR PDF, load the scanned file locally, run recognition, then download the searchable copy. Rotate skewed pages first for better accuracy. Keep the original scan until you confirm Find works on a few known words.
What to do after OCR
Need editable paragraphs? Convert with PDF to Word. Need a photo archive? Export pages with PDF to JPG. Sharing outside your team? Redact sensitive fields and consider a password before email.
Tools in this workflow
- OCR PDF — Run private OCR in your browser.
- PDF to Word — Edit recovered text in .docx after OCR.
- PDF to JPG — Export page images when you need previews.
- Compress PDF — Shrink the searchable file for email limits.