[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":32},["ShallowReactive",2],{"$fl5tgdiruwoep":3},{"slug":4,"title":5,"description":6,"date":7,"product":8,"url":9,"minutes":10,"html":11,"next":12},"make-a-scanned-pdf-searchable","How to make a scanned PDF searchable, right in your browser","Ctrl+F finds nothing in a scanned PDF because each page is a picture. Here's how to add an invisible OCR text layer for free, without uploading the file.","2026-10-11","Searchable PDF","https:\u002F\u002Fsearchable-pdf.tukka.dev",3,"\u003Cp>You open a scanned contract, press Ctrl+F, type a word you can see on the page, and the viewer finds no matches. Your viewer is working fine. A scanned PDF holds a picture of each page, and a picture has no text in it to search.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I made \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsearchable-pdf.tukka.dev\">Searchable PDF\u003C\u002Fa> to fix that. It reads the printed text on each page with OCR and adds it to the PDF as an invisible layer. The pages look the same as before, and you can now search them, select a sentence and copy it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch2>How to tell if a PDF has text in it\u003C\u002Fh2>\n\u003Cp>Try to select a single word with your cursor. In a PDF made from a document, the word highlights. In a scan, you select nothing at all, or the whole page as one image. Searching for a word you can clearly see on the page is just as quick a test.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Office scanners and many phone scanning apps make this kind of PDF, so it's common for receipts, old letters, book pages and printed forms.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch2>What OCR adds to the file\u003C\u002Fh2>\n\u003Cp>OCR, short for optical character recognition, looks at the picture of a page and works out which letters are in it. Searchable PDF writes the words it finds into the PDF as invisible text, placed over the same words in the image. Your PDF viewer searches and selects that hidden text, and you keep seeing the original scan.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The page images are left as they were, with the same resolution and the same page order, so the new file looks like the one you started with.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch2>Making a scanned PDF searchable, step by step\u003C\u002Fh2>\n\u003Col>\n\u003Cli>Open \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsearchable-pdf.tukka.dev\">searchable-pdf.tukka.dev\u003C\u002Fa>.\u003C\u002Fli>\n\u003Cli>Drop in a PDF, or a single photo or screenshot of a page (PNG, JPEG or WebP). An image becomes a one-page PDF, turned the right way up.\u003C\u002Fli>\n\u003Cli>Check the preview. If some pages already have selectable text, the tool lists the ones it will skip.\u003C\u002Fli>\n\u003Cli>Start the OCR. It works through the file one page at a time and shows its progress, and you can cancel whenever you like.\u003C\u002Fli>\n\u003Cli>Download the new PDF and open it in your usual viewer. Search for a word to see it working.\u003C\u002Fli>\n\u003C\u002Fol>\n\u003Cp>The first time, your browser downloads the OCR engine and its English model and keeps them, so later files start sooner.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch2>Getting good results\u003C\u002Fh2>\n\u003Cp>OCR is only as good as the scan. Clear scans of printed English work best, while faint or blurry pages and handwriting come out with mistakes. There are a few limits too:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Col>\n\u003Cli>Files can be up to 50 MB, and a PDF up to 150 pages.\u003C\u002Fli>\n\u003Cli>Images can be up to 20 megapixels, and 8192 pixels on either side.\u003C\u002Fli>\n\u003Cli>Password-protected and digitally signed PDFs need an unlocked, unsigned copy first.\u003C\u002Fli>\n\u003Cli>A page that already has selectable text is skipped whole. If that page also carries a scanned image with words in it, those words stay unsearchable.\u003C\u002Fli>\n\u003C\u002Fol>\n\u003Ch2>Your files stay on your device\u003C\u002Fh2>\n\u003Cp>The OCR engine, Tesseract, runs inside your browser. Your PDF and the text read from it are never uploaded, and resetting the tool or closing the tab clears the working copy. That matters for the documents people tend to scan: IDs, contracts, medical reports and tax papers.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Searchable PDF is free and needs no account. If your scans are bank statements and you want the transactions in a spreadsheet, \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fstatement-to-csv.tukka.dev\">Statement to CSV\u003C\u002Fa> reads scanned statements directly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Make your first scan searchable at \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsearchable-pdf.tukka.dev\">searchable-pdf.tukka.dev\u003C\u002Fa>.\u003C\u002Fp>\n",[13,19,26],{"slug":14,"title":15,"description":16,"date":7,"product":17,"url":18,"minutes":10},"why-your-kundli-looks-different-in-every-app","Lahiri, KP or Raman? Why your kundli looks different in every app","Two kundli apps, two different charts? The ayanamsa, the time zone at birth and the lunar nodes explain most of it. Here's how to check which.","Astro","https:\u002F\u002Fastro.tukka.dev",{"slug":20,"title":21,"description":22,"date":7,"product":23,"url":24,"minutes":25},"talk-to-strangers-by-text","Talk to strangers by text, with an AI that hides abusive messages","Strangers is a free one-on-one text chat with random people. Small AI models in your browser hide sexual, abusive and threatening messages before you see them.","Strangers","https:\u002F\u002Fstrangers.tukka.dev",2,{"slug":27,"title":28,"description":29,"date":7,"product":30,"url":31,"minutes":10},"census-2027-dates-and-questions","Census 2027 is coming to your door. Here's when, and what it will ask","When Census 2027 reaches your state, every question it asks, how to fill it in online yourself, and what the 2011 census found.","Census 2027","https:\u002F\u002Fcensus2027.tukka.dev",1791764063869]