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Make a searchable PDF with OCR

Last updated: July 2026

Turn photos of a document into a searchable PDF: ScanReviver cleans each page and can add a hidden OCR text layer so you can select, copy and search the words. Free, in your browser.

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What the OCR option does

Normally a scanned PDF is just a picture of the page, you cannot search it. Tick the OCR box before downloading and ScanReviver runs Tesseract over the cleaned pages and adds a hidden text layer underneath the image, so the PDF looks identical but the words become selectable and searchable.

• Select and copy text out of the PDF
• Search inside the document with Ctrl/Cmd-F
• Recognises English, Dutch and German
• The page still looks exactly like your scan

How to make a searchable PDF

OCR is optional and off by default, because it adds some processing time. You turn it on for the pages that are text you want to search.

1. Upload your document photos and crop and clean them as usual.
2. Tick “Make the PDF searchable with OCR” before you export.
3. Press Download PDF and wait a little longer while the text layer is built.
4. Open the PDF and try selecting or searching the text.

Good to know

You upload photos, not a finished PDF, ScanReviver builds the searchable PDF for you from the cleaned pages. Clean, sharp text reads best; faint, blurry or handwritten text is harder for any OCR engine. Start from a tidy page with clean a scanned document or go straight to the multi-page flow with scan to PDF.

ScanReviver improves readability; it does not use generative AI and never rewrites text, changes numbers, edits dates or recreates signatures or stamps. Very dark shadows, text hidden under a finger, glossy glare and severe blur can still look imperfect, so always check the result before you rely on it.

Common questions