Scanned PDF to Searchable PDF - Add OCR Layer

Convert scanned PDFs to searchable documents by adding an invisible OCR text layer. Make text selectable and searchable while preserving original look.

Drop scanned PDF here or click to upload

Security: Only process files from sources you trust. All processing happens locally in your browser.

Extract Images from PDF - Save Embedded …

HTML to PDF Converter - Free Online Web …

SVG to PDF Converter - Preserve Vector Q…

PPTX to PDF Converter - PowerPoint to PD…

PDF to Grayscale - Convert Color PDF to …

View all Pdf converters →

Frequently Asked Questions

A searchable PDF contains an invisible text layer on top of scanned images, allowing you to search, select, and copy text while maintaining the original visual appearance of the scanned document.

This tool uses Tesseract.js OCR engine to analyze each page, recognize text content, and create an invisible text layer that overlays the original image at the exact position of each word.

The tool supports 12 major languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, and Korean.

No, your original PDF remains unchanged. The tool creates a new searchable PDF file with '_searchable' added to the filename. The original scanned images are preserved exactly.

Accuracy depends on scan quality. Clear, high-resolution scans with good contrast typically achieve 90-95% accuracy. Words with confidence below 30% are automatically excluded.

Yes, this tool processes multi-page PDFs with a progress indicator showing the status of each page. All pages are processed sequentially to ensure consistent quality.

Yes, all processing happens entirely in your browser using client-side JavaScript. Your PDF files are never uploaded to any server, ensuring complete privacy and security.

Processing occurs in your browser, so limitations depend on your device's memory. For best performance, PDFs under 50MB with fewer than 100 pages are recommended.

The text layer is intentionally made invisible (opacity: 0) so you can see the original scanned image while still being able to search and select text. This preserves the authentic appearance.

Yes, the searchable PDF prints exactly like the original scanned document. The invisible text layer doesn't affect printing, only adds the ability to search and select text digitally.

Scanned PDF to Searchable PDF - Add OCR Layer

OCR Settings

Processing Pages

Preview

Related Tools