PDF on Mac
How to OCR a PDF on your Mac (make a scan searchable)
A scanned PDF is just a picture until you run OCR on it. Recto & Verso reads the text on your Mac — so you can search and copy from a scan without sending it to a cloud service.
Optical character recognition (OCR) finds the words inside a scanned page so the document becomes searchable and selectable. Because Recto & Verso does this on your device, a confidential scan never has to be uploaded to a web OCR service.
How to make a scanned PDF searchable
- Open the scanned PDF in Recto & Verso.
- Run Extract text / OCR. The app reads each page locally.
- Save the result as searchable text — ready to copy, search, and reference.
Free tool vs. the Mac app
The free browser tool handles quick, single-file OCR. The native Mac app is faster on long documents, works offline, and fits into batch workflows.
Insurance adjusters, lawyers, researchers
If you copy cert numbers, clauses, or figures out of scans all day, searchable text saves real time — and keeping it local keeps client material private.
Turn scans into searchable text — on your Mac
On-device OCR, no uploads, one-time purchase.
FAQ
- Does OCR send my scan to a server?
- No — Recto & Verso runs OCR on your Mac. The scan is never uploaded.
- What languages are supported?
- OCR uses your Mac's on-device text recognition, which handles major languages.