A scanned PDF looks like a document but behaves like a photo — you cannot select, search, or copy its text. OCR (optical character recognition) fixes that by adding a real, searchable text layer over the scan.

Turn a scan into searchable text

1. Open the OCR PDF tool.
2. Upload your scanned PDF (camera photos, exported copies, or mixed documents).
3. Run OCR — large files can take a few minutes.
4. Download the new PDF. You can now search, select, and copy its text.

Does OCR work for Hindi?

Yes. OCR here runs on the server with open-source tools (ocrmypdf and Tesseract) and supports English and Hindi, so scanned Hindi documents become searchable too — handy for records, notices, and study material.

Just need the plain text?

If your PDF already has a text layer (a normal digital PDF, or one you just ran OCR on), you can pull the words straight out with the PDF to Text tool — ideal for notes, scripts, or quick edits.