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Make a Scanned PDF Searchable on Your Mac

A scanned PDF is just pictures of pages, so you can't search it or copy from it. Make PDF Searchable reads the text with OCR and adds it as an invisible layer behind each page, which keeps the original look. Recognition runs on your Mac and picks the language automatically.

Get Toolbox for MacAll Docs tools

One-time purchase · macOS 15 or later

The Docs category in Toolbox for Mac, with Scan Document, Redact PDF, Fill & Flatten Forms, Make PDF Searchable, PDF to Word, Sign PDF, Merge PDFs, Split PDF, Organize PDF, Delete Pages, Extract Pages, Images to PDF, Compress PDF, Add Password, Remove Password, PDF to Images, Convert Documents, Word to PDF, PowerPoint to PDF, Excel to PDF, Web Page to PDF and Markdown to PDF.The Docs category in Toolbox for Mac, with Scan Document, Redact PDF, Fill & Flatten Forms, Make PDF Searchable, PDF to Word, Sign PDF, Merge PDFs, Split PDF, Organize PDF, Delete Pages, Extract Pages, Images to PDF, Compress PDF, Add Password, Remove Password, PDF to Images, Convert Documents, Word to PDF, PowerPoint to PDF, Excel to PDF, Web Page to PDF and Markdown to PDF.

How to use Make PDF Searchable

  1. Open Make PDF Searchable and drop your scanned PDFs.

  2. Choose what to do with pages that already have text: leave them or recognize them again.

  3. Click Make Searchable. New copies are saved to a dated folder in Downloads.

Questions about Make PDF Searchable

How do I OCR a PDF on Mac for free without uploading it?

Toolbox is a paid app, but its OCR runs entirely on your Mac, so the PDF is never uploaded. Drop the scanned PDF into Make PDF Searchable and click Make Searchable.

Will OCR change how my PDF looks?

No. The text is added as an invisible layer, so the pages look the same. If you choose Recognise again for pages that had text, those pages are redrawn as 300 dpi images, which can make the file bigger.

Why can't I select text in my scanned PDF?

The scanner saved each page as an image with no text in it. Adding an OCR text layer makes the words searchable and selectable.

Do I need to pick the language?

No. Recognition picks the language automatically.

72 Mac tools. One app. Pay once.

From $24.99 one-time · macOS 15 Sequoia or later

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