OCR PDF - Frequently Asked Questions

The OCR PDF tool reads the text in scanned PDFs and images, so you can copy, edit and search it. OCR (optical character recognition) turns a picture of text into real text.

• Scanned PDFs and images: works with PDFs and with JPG, PNG, WebP and BMP images.
• 21 languages: choose the document's language for better accuracy.
• Text you can use: the result appears on screen to copy, and you can download it as a TXT file.
• Private: everything runs in your browser. Your file is never uploaded.

No. OCR runs entirely in your browser, on your own device. Your PDF or image is never uploaded to PDF Lab and is never sent to any other service.

Your browser downloads the text-recognition engine and the language data the first time you use a language. After that, recognition happens locally. When you close the page, the file and the extracted text are gone.

You can choose from 21 languages: English, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Select the main language of your document before you start. The right language makes a big difference, especially for non-Latin scripts such as Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Korean and Russian. For a document in several languages, choose the one used most.

The extracted text is shown on screen as soon as each page is done, so you can copy it straight away. Click Download TXT to save it as a plain text file. Multi-page PDFs are labelled page by page.

The tool does not change your original PDF. If you need the text inside a PDF, paste it into a document and save it as PDF, or use Edit PDF to add text to pages.

Accuracy depends mostly on the quality of the scan:

• Clear printed text at 300 DPI or more, with dark text on a light background, usually gives very good results.
• Low resolution, blur, shadows or faded text reduce accuracy.
• Handwriting is recognised only partly. Neat, printed-style handwriting works best.
• Complex layouts such as tables or several columns may come out in a different reading order.

Choosing the correct language, straightening skewed pages and scanning with good light all help. Always check important text, such as numbers and names, against the original.

Yes. Every page of a PDF is processed in turn, and the status line shows the progress. You can stop at any time and the text recognised so far stays on screen.

Because the work happens on your device, long documents take longer on older phones and computers. For PDFs over 50 pages or 50 MB, the tool asks before it starts. To go faster, split the PDF first and process only the pages you need.

Yes. It works in modern browsers on Android phones, iPhones and tablets. You can pick a PDF or an image from your files or photos.

Recognition uses your phone's processor, so a page usually takes a little longer than on a computer. Keep the page open until it finishes. To photograph paper documents first, use Scan to PDF.

Yes. It is free with no registration, no watermark and no daily limit. PDF Lab is supported by advertising.