OCR PDF - Make Scanned PDF Searchable
Add a searchable, selectable text layer to scanned PDFs with OCR, keeping the original pages. Your files are never uploaded to our servers. ToolkitPoint processes them on your own computer, so confidential documents stay with you.
Processed in your browser. Your files are not uploaded.
How to use OCR PDF - Make Scanned PDF Searchable
- Choose a scanned PDF.
- Pick the language of the text and the reading resolution (220 DPI suits most scans).
- Leave "Skip pages that already have selectable text" ticked for mixed documents.
- Press "Make PDF searchable" and download the new PDF.
What OCR PDF - Make Scanned PDF Searchable does
Add a searchable, selectable text layer to scanned PDFs with OCR, keeping the original pages.
The document bytes are handled in browser memory with PDF libraries loaded only on this page. The selected files are not uploaded to ToolkitPoint. For OCR PDF - Make Scanned PDF Searchable, the operation is specifically to add a searchable, selectable text layer to scanned PDFs with OCR, keeping the original pages.
Worked example
A 10-page scanned contract becomes contract-searchable.pdf. Pressing Ctrl+F for "termination" in any PDF reader highlights each place the word appears, and the status line reports how many words were added on each page.
When OCR PDF - Make Scanned PDF Searchable is the right tool
- Making scanned contracts, receipts and letters searchable.
- Copying text out of a scanned document without retyping it.
How to verify the result
Open the downloaded PDF independently and inspect page count, page order, orientation, selectable text, and any marks you added. The final OCR PDF - Make Scanned PDF Searchable output should visibly match this goal: Add a searchable, selectable text layer to scanned PDFs with OCR, keeping the original pages.
Important limitations
Accuracy depends on scan quality; handwriting is not recognised. The text layer uses standard fonts, so some accented or non-Latin characters are stored as ?.
A free OCR PDF - Make Scanned PDF Searchable alternative
People looking for OCR PDF - Make Scanned PDF Searchable often compare products such as Adobe Acrobat Online, iLovePDF, Smallpdf. ToolkitPoint is not affiliated with those services. This page keeps add a searchable, selectable text layer to scanned pdfs with ocr, keeping the original pages free and available without an account; features, limits, and policies on other products can change, so compare their current product pages before choosing.
Last updated: September 15, 2026
Frequently asked questions
What does OCR PDF do?
It reads the words in each scanned page with optical character recognition and adds them as an invisible text layer exactly over the words. The PDF looks the same, but you can now search, select and copy text.
Are my pages changed or re-compressed?
No. The original page images and content are kept; only the invisible text is added, so quality does not drop.
How accurate is it?
Clean printed scans at 200-300 DPI read very well. Faint, skewed or handwritten pages give more mistakes, so check names and numbers before relying on them.
Which languages are supported?
English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Dutch. The first run downloads the language data, about 10 MB, which is then cached.
Is my document uploaded?
No. OCR runs in your browser with Tesseract, so confidential scans stay on your device.