How to make a scanned PDF searchable on a Mac

What is a searchable PDF?

A searchable PDF has two layers: the image of each page, and an invisible layer of text placed exactly over the words of that image. You see the original page; your Mac sees the text. That text layer is what lets you search the document, select a sentence, copy it, or have Spotlight find the file by a word inside it.

Scanners, phone scanning apps and “Print to PDF” of a picture often make image-only PDFs, without that layer. OCR (optical character recognition) reads the words in the images and creates it.

Is my PDF searchable? Open it in Preview and press ⌘F, or try to select a word with the mouse. If the search finds nothing in a page full of text, or you can only draw a rectangle instead of selecting words, the PDF has no text layer.

Step by step

1. Open the PDF in Textify

   Click Select image(s) or PDF(s) (⌘O), or drop the PDF on the Textify window or its Dock icon. PDFs with many pages are fine: Textify recognizes every page.

2. Check the OCR language

   Click Settings… and choose the language of the document under OCR Language. On macOS 13 Ventura and later, Automatic detects it for you.

3. Recognize the text

   Click Recognize text (OCR) or press ⌘R. The recognized text appears in the Text preview, next to the page.

4. Correct the text if needed

   Click Edit text (⌘E) to fix a misread word. Your corrections go into the text layer of the PDF too.

5. Save the searchable PDF

   Click Save as… and choose PDF with text integrated, or press ⌘D, then choose where to save the new file.

Keep the original quality

When you convert a PDF, leave the four image settings on their defaults: Colors, Original image quality, Original image size and Document enhancer Off. Textify then keeps the original pages of the PDF, with their vector text, drawings and sharpness, and only adds the invisible text on top of them.

When you convert a single PDF, its outline (the bookmarks in Preview’s sidebar) is kept as well.

Make the file smaller

Scans made with a phone or a scanner are often heavy. In Settings…, choose how the pages are saved:

• Colors: Colors, Grayscale, Black & White or Sepia. Black & White gives the smallest files for text documents.
• Image Quality: Original, High, Medium or Low compression.
• Image Size: Original, Large (2300 pixels), Medium (1500 pixels) or Small (900 pixels) on the longest side.
• Document enhancer: Off, Low, Medium or High, to remove shadows, whiten the paper and sharpen the text of photographed pages.

The estimated size of the PDF appears under the text preview, so you can compare before saving. These settings only change the saved file: Textify always recognizes the text from the original image, so a smaller file doesn’t mean worse OCR.

Combine several scans into one PDF

Select several images or PDFs at once in the open window, or drop them on Textify together. Textify puts all the pages in one document, recognizes them in one go, and saves them as one searchable PDF.

Pages scanned sideways or upside down? Use Rotate image 90° left or right in the File menu, or rotate all the images at once, before you recognize the text.

Scan paper with your iPhone

No scanner? Choose File › Import from iPhone/iPad › Scan Documents, or click the iPhone button next to Select image(s) or PDF(s): scan the pages with your iPhone or iPad, tap Save, and they appear in Textify, ready for OCR. This uses Apple’s Continuity Camera: both devices need to be signed in to the same Apple Account, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on.

Convert many PDFs at once

To make a whole folder of PDFs searchable, use Textify’s Quick Action in the Finder instead: select the files, Control-click them and choose Quick Actions › Convert to searchable PDF. Each file gets its own searchable copy. How to set up batch OCR.

Give the PDF a paper size

With Textify PRO, Preferences › PDF Settings sets the print size of the exported PDF files, such as A4, US Letter or US Legal, so they print at the right size.