How to make a scanned PDF searchable
A scanned page is normally just a picture, so you cannot search it. Text recognition adds an invisible text layer that fixes this.
Steps
- Tap Scan on the home screen and scan the document.
- Before saving, turn on Searchable PDF.
- Tap Save; text recognition runs on your device and is added to the PDF.
- Open the PDF with Open PDF and use the search icon to find words.
- To copy the text of one page of an existing document, use Recognize Text.
Good to know
- Text recognition uses Google ML Kit entirely on your device; for non-Latin scripts a model may be downloaded on first use.
- Handwriting and very blurry pages may be recognized only partly; skipped lines are reported in the result.
More in the app
Scanning, compression, text recognition, signatures and passwords — on your phone, offline.