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A scanned page is a picture of words, not words — nothing on it can be searched, selected or copied. This reads each page with an on-device OCR engine and lays the recognised words back over the same image, invisibly, positioned to match. The page looks exactly as it did; Ctrl-F and copy-paste now work on it. The recognition model downloads once, the first time you use this tool, and everything after that runs on your device.
This runs in your browser. The file is not uploaded, there is no account to create, and nothing is added to the document you download.
Also searched for: ocr pdf, searchable pdf, scan to text, make pdf searchable. It is the same tool whichever way you found it.
Run it through here. Each page is read by an on-device OCR engine and the recognised words are laid back over the same image, invisibly and positioned to match. The page looks exactly as it did, but Ctrl-F and copy-paste now work on it.
No. The image is untouched — the text is added as an invisible layer on top, which is why the page is indistinguishable from the original to look at.
The recognition model downloads once, the first time you use this tool. Everything after that runs on your device with nothing more to fetch.
No. The file is opened, changed and written by this browser tab — it is never sent to a server, so there is no queue to wait in and nothing to delete afterwards. Once the page has loaded you can turn the network off and the tool still works.