PDF OCR
Make scanned PDFs searchable. Deskbox reads the text on each page and adds it as an invisible layer, so you can search, select and copy it.
Drop your PDF here
or choose one from your computer or phone
Your PDF is read on this device. The recognition program and language data are downloaded from jsDelivr the first time.
How to make a PDF searchable
Open the scanned PDF
Drop the file onto the page. Deskbox checks which pages already have text.
Choose the languages
Select every language that appears in the document, then press Make searchable.
Download
Download the searchable PDF, or copy the recognized text straight from the page.
What a searchable PDF is
A scanned page is just a picture of text. OCR (optical character recognition) reads that picture, and Deskbox places the words invisibly over it, in the same positions. The page looks exactly as before, but you can now search it and select and copy the text, and screen readers can read it.
Getting good results
OCR works best on clean, straight scans of printed text. Each page is rendered at about 300 dpi for recognition. Handwriting, unusual fonts and very small print are often misread, so check important text before relying on it.
Frequently asked questions
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. Recognition runs in your browser with Tesseract. The recognition program and the language data (a few megabytes per language) are downloaded from jsDelivr the first time; your file is never sent.
Which languages are supported?
English, Turkish, Spanish, Arabic, German, French and Hindi. Select several if the document mixes languages.
What happens to pages that already have text?
With Skip pages that already have text switched on, they are left as they are, which is faster and avoids doubled text. Switch it off to read every page anyway; those pages then have two text layers, the original one and the new one.