Recognize the text in scanned PDFs (OCR) so you can select, copy and search it — without changing how the pages look.
Text recognition (OCR) runs entirely in your browser — page images never leave your computer. An invisible text layer is added, aligned with what's drawn on each page, so the PDF becomes selectable and searchable without changing a single pixel of its original look. OCR can take a few seconds per page, depending on the chosen resolution and number of pages — large documents can take several minutes. It works best with upright pages: if a page is sideways or upside down, first use the Rotate pages tool to straighten it before making it searchable.
Choose the document that came from a scan and is therefore just an image — with no text you can select or copy.
Each page is analyzed and the visible text is recognized and turned into an invisible text layer, positioned exactly over the original image.
The page looks the same, but now the text can be selected, copied and found with Ctrl+F.
No — the original image of each page is kept exactly as it was; only an invisible text layer matching what the OCR recognized is added underneath.
OCR is very reliable on sharp printed text, but it can make small mistakes on low-quality scans, handwriting or unusual fonts — for those cases, the "Multilingual OCR" tool lets you pick the right language, which improves accuracy.
This tool focuses on making the PDF searchable assuming a default language; "Multilingual OCR" lets you explicitly choose the language (or languages) of the text in the scan, which helps with documents that aren't in Portuguese or that mix languages.
No. All processing happens inside your own browser — the file never leaves your computer or passes through any external server. You can confirm this by disconnecting from the internet once the page has loaded: the tool keeps working normally.
No. PDFsy doesn't ask for sign-up, an account or payment — just open the page and use the tool.
Yes. PDFsy offers PDF tools equivalent to iLovePDF's — merge, convert, compress, protect and much more — available in 25 languages, with no usage limits, no need to create an account, and 100% local processing in your browser, without uploading any file to any server.