How to make a PDF searchable

How to make a PDF searchable on iPhone with Scanfone

1. Open Scanfone (free, no account).
2. Scan the document with the camera, or import an existing PDF or photos.
3. Let Scanfone run text recognition on the pages. It happens on your phone.
4. Save the PDF. You can now search it, select and copy text, and find it from Scanfone's search.
5. Share it or save it to Files, and the text layer goes with it.

Why your scanned PDF is not searchable

When a camera or scanner captures a page, the result is an image. It may look like text to you, but to your phone it is just pixels. Press Find in a PDF viewer and you get nothing. Try to copy a sentence and you select the whole page as a picture.

A searchable PDF has an invisible text layer on top of the image. The page looks exactly the same, but the words are there as real text, so search, copy and paste all work. Creating that layer is the job of OCR, short for optical character recognition.

Make a PDF searchable in Scanfone

1. Get the document in. Scan paper with the camera, or import a PDF or photos you already have.
2. Run text recognition. Scanfone's OCR runs on the iPhone itself. No upload, no waiting for a server, no account.
3. Save. The PDF now carries a text layer. It costs nothing and there is no paywall at this step (we checked: it is our app).
4. Search and copy. Open the PDF and search for a word, or select a paragraph and copy it into Notes, Mail or a message.
5. Find it later. Scanfone's search looks across all your documents, including the text inside them.

What you can do with a searchable PDF

• Find a word in a long document, such as a clause in a contract or a figure in a statement.
• Copy text into an email or a form instead of retyping it.
• Search your whole archive. Type "insurance" and find the letter, even if the file is called "Scan 14".
• Export the text. Use PDF to text to get a plain TXT file of the recognised words.
• Edit in Word. With Pro, export to Word (DOCX) via PDF to Word.

Getting better OCR results

Text recognition is only as good as the picture it reads. A few habits help a lot:

• Scan in good, even light and keep the page flat.
• Let the document camera fix the perspective so lines are straight.
• Use the Black & white or Gray filter for printed text; it boosts contrast.
• Rotate pages so text is the right way up.
• Expect printed text to work best. Neat handwriting may be recognised, messy handwriting less so. Always check important numbers.

Private by design

Many online "make PDF searchable" tools ask you to upload your file to their servers. That is a strange thing to do with a bank statement or a medical letter. In Scanfone, scanning and OCR happen on your phone, and nothing is uploaded unless you turn on Pro sync. There are no ads, no tracking and no analytics. Read the details in our privacy policy.

Does it work with PDFs I did not scan?

Yes. Import a PDF from Files, Mail or another app. If it is a scanned image PDF, Scanfone can recognise the text in it. If it already has real text (for example a PDF exported from a word processor), it is searchable already.

What it costs

OCR, search and copying text are free and unlimited. Free PDFs get one small "Scanned free with Scanfone" line under each page, with no watermark over the content. Scanfone Pro removes that line and adds sync, 1 TB cloud backup and Word/PowerPoint export for $2.99 the first year, then $19.99 a year. See pricing.

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