How to OCR a PDF on a Mac

With PDF Unlimited (free)

1. Open the scan

   Open the scanned PDF in PDF Unlimited. If ⌘F finds nothing, it needs OCR.

2. Run OCR

   Choose Tools > Make Searchable (OCR). Longer documents take a little longer. It all runs on your Mac.

3. Save

   Save the searchable version. The pages look exactly the same; the text layer is invisible.

4. Search and copy

   Press ⌘F to search, or select text and copy it into another app.

5. Export the text

   Need it all in one place? Choose File > Export > As Text… to save the recognized text as a plain text file.

With Preview, built into macOS

1. Export with embedded text

   Open the scanned PDF in Preview and choose File > Export.

2. Select Embed Text

   Select Embed Text and save. Apple notes this option only appears if no text was previously recognized in the document.

How to tell if a PDF needs OCR

Try to select a word. If you can highlight individual words, the PDF already has text. If your cursor draws a box over the whole page, or ⌘F finds nothing, the pages are images, usually from a scanner or a phone camera.

Getting good results

OCR is only as good as the scan. A few things help:

• Scan at a decent resolution. Tiny, blurry text produces guesses.
• Rotate sideways pages first in Pages mode. Straight pages read better.
• Clean, high-contrast scans beat photos taken at an angle in dim light.
• Handwriting is hit and miss. Printed text is far more reliable.

OCR and other jobs

Run OCR before you compress, so recognition works on the sharpest version of each page. If you are going to redact a scan, OCR first too: it lets ⌘F find every mention of a name so you can box them all.

OCR makes text searchable. It does not make the page editable like a Word document. To add your own words to the page, use text boxes.

Why offline OCR matters

Scans are often the most personal documents people own: passports, medical letters, signed contracts, old tax returns. Online OCR services need you to upload them. PDF Unlimited recognizes text on your Mac with no account and no telemetry.

Scanning straight into a searchable PDF

If you are starting from paper, scan first and OCR second. A Mac can scan from a connected scanner with Image Capture, and Continuity Camera can scan a document with a nearby iPhone into many Mac apps. Save the scan as a PDF, open it in PDF Unlimited, and run Tools > Make Searchable (OCR).

Once a whole drawer of paperwork is searchable, Spotlight gets much more useful too, because it can index the text inside PDFs.

OCR without Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat OCR is a paid feature. The free Acrobat Reader does not recognize text in scans. According to Adobe, Acrobat Standard can make scans searchable, while the mode that turns scans into editable text and images is in Acrobat Pro.

If your goal is a searchable, copyable PDF, you do not need a subscription for it. Tools > Make Searchable (OCR) in PDF Unlimited does that for free, on your Mac. If you need to rewrite the scanned words themselves, that is a job for a full editor. See our Adobe Acrobat alternative comparison.

Questions