How to OCR a scanned PDF
Upload a scanned PDF.
Click Run OCR.
Wait for the browser to process each page.
Review detected OCR words.
Double-click a word to correct it.
Use the OCR correction sidebar to review low-confidence words.
What to expect
OCR creates editable overlays from scanned text.
Edits on scanned PDFs are visual edits: the old image area is covered and new text is drawn.
CrabPDF can use scan-style rendering to make replacement text look less pasted on.
OCR quality depends on the scan quality, resolution, language, and document noise.
Private by design
CrabPDF is designed to run locally in your browser. The editing flow does not require uploading your PDF to a backend server. This makes it useful for quick local edits, OCR corrections, search and replace, and redaction experiments.
CrabPDF is experimental. Always verify important documents after editing or redaction.