What is the OCR Scanned PDF?
PDF OCR (optical character recognition) reads the text in scanned pages. AnyShift runs the Tesseract OCR engine in your browser at 200 or 300 DPI and can output a searchable PDF (the original look with an invisible, selectable text layer), plain text or a Word document.
How to use the OCR Scanned PDF
- Drop your scanned PDF.
- Choose the document language and accuracy (300 DPI is more accurate).
- Pick an output: searchable PDF, text or Word.
- Start OCR, watch the page-by-page progress, then download.
Why use AnyShift's OCR Scanned PDF
Files stay on your deviceProcessing happens locally in your browser — nothing is uploaded to a server.
Fast, no queueNo upload or download wait. Results are ready as soon as your device finishes.
No signup, no watermarkUse it as often as you like. Output is clean and full quality.
Works everywhereWindows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android and Chromebook — any modern browser.
Popular use cases
- Searching scanned contracts and archives
- Copying text from scanned books
- Making scans accessible to screen readers
- Converting paper records to editable Word files
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is OCR?
Clean printed scans reach 98–99% accuracy. Handwriting, low resolution and skewed pages reduce accuracy.
Which languages are supported?
English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and many more, including Arabic, Chinese and Hindi.
Why is it slower than other tools?
OCR analyses every pixel of every page. Expect a few seconds per page on a laptop.
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Last reviewed: Built for: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France Part of PDF & Documents