Get the text out (OCR)
Drop in a photo or a PDF, pick the language, and the words are read into text you can copy. The recogniser runs in your browser, so the page never leaves your device.
It works best on clear, printed text that is roughly upright. Handwriting, faint scans and heavy layout are where any recogniser struggles, and this one will too, so check the result against the original before you rely on it.
Questions
- Are my files uploaded?
- No. Everything happens inside your browser tab. The file is read from your disk, worked on in memory, and saved back to your disk. It is never sent to us or to anyone else, and there is no server here that could receive it. You can confirm it yourself: open your browser's developer tools, look at the Network tab, and run any tool. No request carries your file.
- How accurate is it?
- On a clean photo of printed text it is good, usually most words correct. On a faint scan, an unusual font, or handwriting it drops off, as every recogniser does. Treat the result as a draft to check, not a certified transcription.
- Which languages does it read?
- English and Urdu. Each language is loaded the first time you use it, from this site, and then kept ready for the rest of your visit. Pick the one that matches your document before you run it.
- Can it read a PDF?
- Yes. A PDF page is drawn to a picture first and then read, so a scanned PDF works. If the PDF already has selectable text, you can copy that directly in a reader without recognising it again.
- Why is the first run slow?
- The recogniser and the language are downloaded once, which is a few megabytes, and then cached. After that, reading a page is quick, and none of it involves a server of ours.
The other tools here
- Scan with your phonePhotos of pages into a straightened PDF
- Merge PDFsCombine files into one, in the order you choose
- Split a PDFCut one file into several, by page ranges
- Extract pagesPick the pages you want into a new PDF
- Organise pagesReorder and rotate the pages of one file
- Delete pagesRemove the pages you do not want and keep the rest
- Add page numbersStamp numbers onto the pages, in the corner you choose
- Watermark a PDFDraw text across every page, at the angle you choose
- PDF to imagesTurn every page into a JPG or PNG, in one zip
- Images to PDFTurn photos into one PDF, in your order
- Compress a PDFMake a file smaller by re-encoding its images