Chrome's new feature makes Scanned PDFs Searchable and Editable: Never Type Again

Google is testing a new OCR feature in Chrome’s built-in PDF Viewer, making it easier to not only extract text from scanned PDFs but also to find and copy the text within those images.

If you’ve ever received a scanned PDF and struggled to extract the text, you might have considered purchasing expensive OCR software or relying on online tools. But worry no longer! Chrome, the browser you likely already use on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chromebooks, now includes powerful built-in OCR capabilities.

Chrome improves OCR in PDF Viewer for Scanned PDFs

Chrome is experimenting with a new PDF Viewer feature, codenamed ‘PDF Searchify,’ behind a flag making it easier to find and copy the text in scanned PDFs.

While text extraction from PDFs has been available in ChromeOS, this new feature specifically targets PDF images from scanners, allowing users to interact with the text within these images. The Chrome PDF Viewer now makes the text within these PDF images searchable and editable, improving usability and accessibility.

The PDF Searchify feature,” which runs OCR on PDF images and makes the recognized text searchable and editable” is available for Chrome on Mac, Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS.

Here’s how to enable the feature in Chrome:

1. Launch Chrome
2. Visit chrome://flags.
3. Find “Make the text in PDF images interactable.”
4. Select “Enabled” and restart Chrome.

Google Chrome already offers text extraction capabilities via integrated Google Lens, In addition to translating text, it can extract text from images and videos, including scanned PDFs. However, Google Lens cannot currently search for specific words within PDF images or edit the extracted text.

Google may soon make this feature available in a stable Chrome release. What’s your take on this? Are you amazed by Chrome’s OCR capabilities? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

In addition, Google Chrome may soon introduce a new Task Manager and support for unscoped extensions for the Omnibox, granting extensions more permissions to interact with address bar input.