Make PDF Searchable
Make PDF Searchable runs OCR (tesseract.js) fully on your device, then rebuilds each page as an image with an invisible text layer placed from the recognized words. The result can be searched and copied in any PDF viewer. Free, no upload, works offline after the language model is cached.
Drop a scanned PDF to add a searchable text layer
Files stay in your burrow: everything is processed on your device, never uploaded.
How to use this tool
- 1Drop a scanned PDF and pick the recognition languages.
- 2Choose the scan resolution (150 is fast, 300 is more accurate).
- 3Click Recognize; pages are processed one by one on your device.
- 4Download the searchable PDF and try searching a word in your viewer.
FAQ
Does the text layer line up with the image?
Alignment follows the recognized words, so on clean scans it lands within a couple of pixels. Skewed pages, artistic fonts or low resolution can make the highlight drift from the visible characters. Search and copy still work; the visual match is closest on straight, sharp scans.
Why did my file get bigger?
Each page is stored as a rasterized image plus the text layer. That is inherent to making a scan searchable without sending it anywhere. If size matters, run the result through the compress tool afterwards.
Does the original text stay if a page already has some?
No. Treated pages are rebuilt as image plus invisible text, so any original text layer on those pages is replaced by the recognition result. If your PDF already has selectable text, you do not need this tool at all.