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How to make a scanned PDF searchable on a Mac

A scan is a picture of a page, so you cannot search or copy its words. How to tell, the free command line way, and how to fix it without uploading.

How to tell if a PDF is searchable

Open it in Preview and press Command F. Search for a word you can see on the page. If Preview finds nothing, the page is a picture with no text behind it.

Why Preview cannot fix it

Preview can show and mark up a scan, but it does not add a text layer to a scanned PDF, so the saved file stays unsearchable.

The free command line way

OCRmyPDF is a free, open source tool that adds a text layer to a scan. With Homebrew installed:

brew install ocrmypdf
ocrmypdf scan.pdf searchable.pdf

The one click way

Simply PDF adds the text layer using text recognition built into your Mac, in many languages, so the scan becomes searchable and selectable without leaving your Mac.

Questions

Why can I not search a scanned PDF?

A scan is an image of a page. Until text recognition adds a text layer, there are no words in the file for search to find.

Can I make a PDF searchable without uploading it?

Yes. OCRmyPDF on the command line and Simply PDF both work on your Mac.

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