Filevolo

OCR PDF - Make Scanned PDFs Searchable

Turn a scanned PDF into one you can search and select text in, using on-device AI-powered OCR, processed in your browser.

Drag a PDF here, or choose a file

For scanned or image-based PDFs - works best when each page is a single full-page scan.

You can also paste a file directly (Ctrl+V or ⌘V).

This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your file is not uploaded to a server at any point.

What Is a Searchable PDF?

A searchable PDF can look exactly like the original scan while containing machine-readable text - that hidden text layer is what makes Ctrl+F search, text selection and copying possible.

On-Device PDF OCR

OCR processing runs inside your browser using WebAssembly, so the source PDF doesn't need to be uploaded to a remote OCR service.

Frequently asked questions

The page still looks exactly like the original scan - but there's now an invisible layer of recognized text sitting behind the image, in the same position as the real words. That's what lets you Ctrl+F to search it, select and copy text, or have it show up in another tool's search results, the same trick most PDF scanners' own "searchable PDF" output uses.

PDF to Text pulls the recognized words out into a separate .txt file. This tool keeps your original PDF - same look, same layout - and adds the recognized text invisibly inside it, so the file itself becomes searchable rather than producing a second file.

Scanned pages where the image fills the page - the common result of scanning a paper document. If a page already has real text, or has several separate images rather than one full-page scan, it's left untouched rather than guessed at.

It depends on scan quality, same as any OCR. A clear, straight, well-lit scan lines up closely; heavy skew or a low-resolution scan can shift it slightly. Since the text is invisible, a small misalignment never affects how the page looks - only how precisely a search or selection lands.

No. The file is read and the OCR engine runs entirely in your browser using WebAssembly. Nothing is uploaded to a server.

That's PDF to Text, at /pdf-to-text - same on-device OCR engine, built to extract the words into a plain text file instead of embedding them back into the PDF.

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