OCR scanned pages

When to use this

You imported a scan or a photo of a document and ⌘F finds nothing on the page.

Steps

1. Open the scanned page in your workspace.
2. Run OCR from the page or document menu.
3. Wait for recognition to finish — it runs entirely on your Mac.

Tip

OCR runs locally using Apple’s Vision framework. A scan of your passport, a lease, or a medical form never leaves the machine.

What you should see

⌘F now finds text on the page, and the recognized text can be edited the same way as any other detected text.

Related

Edit existing PDF text

Editing text once it’s recognized.

Search inside your workspace

Searching across OCR’d and native pages alike.