How to make a scanned PDF searchable on a Mac

A scan is a picture of text: you can't search it or copy from it. OCR (optical character recognition) reads the words and adds an invisible text layer so you can.

Why not an online OCR site?

Online converters upload your document to someone else's server. For contracts, bank letters, medical or tax paperwork that's a real risk. Your Mac can do OCR itself: Apple's Vision framework recognises text on the device.

With Stillpage

1. For one file: open it and click Make Searchable in the toolbar, then save.
2. For many files: choose Make Searchable in the sidebar, drop in files or a whole folder, and click Make Searchable. Copies are saved next to the originals (name.ocr.pdf) or into a folder you choose, keeping subfolders.

Pages that already contain text are skipped, so running it twice does no harm. Choose a language if your documents aren't in English, or Fast for quicker, rougher results.

Getting the best results

• Scan at 300 dpi. Lower resolutions lose small print; much higher ones just make bigger files.
• Keep pages straight and well lit. Phone photos work, but flat, even light matters more than the camera.
• Pick the document's language in the Language menu when it isn't English, so accents and special characters are read correctly.

What you can do once it's searchable

Press ⌘F in any PDF viewer to find a word, select and copy passages, and let Spotlight find the document by its contents. The scan itself looks exactly the same: the text layer is invisible.