Every file you touch here stays on your machine.
PDF, image, developer, SEO, text, student and business tools — all free, all entirely in your browser. No upload, no account, no server ever sees your data.
The toolset
Focused tools covering the everyday PDF work — pick one to get started, no account needed.
How this actually works
Each tool runs entirely with JavaScript already loaded in this page — PDF tools via pdf-lib and pdf.js, image tools via the browser's native Canvas API, and everything else with plain JavaScript. Your files or input are read into browser memory, processed, and handed back as a download or copyable result. This page itself is served by a small Laravel route; Laravel never sees your files either. The only backend in use is Supabase, and only for two optional things: signing in with a magic link, and — only if you're signed in — a log of which tool you ran and when. Two things have real limits worth knowing up front: Compress PDF flattens each page to a re-encoded image (great for scan-heavy PDFs, not ideal if you need selectable text after), and Word/Excel/PowerPoint ⇄ PDF conversion genuinely requires a server-side rendering engine, so it isn't included here — this build only ships tools that can honestly run client-side.
Questions people actually ask
What is OCR PDF actually doing?
It runs Tesseract.js — a WebAssembly build of the open-source Tesseract OCR engine — entirely in your browser to recognize the text in each page's image, then either builds a new PDF with that text placed invisibly over the original page image (so it looks the same but becomes selectable/searchable) or gives you the recognized text as a plain .txt file.
Which languages are supported?
English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Hindi, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Russian, and Japanese. Pick the language the document is actually written in for accurate results — running English OCR on a Hindi document (or vice versa) produces garbled text.
Why does the first run take longer than later ones?
The OCR engine and the selected language's data (a few megabytes) are downloaded once when you first run OCR PDF. Your browser caches them, so switching pages or running it again with the same language skips that download.
Does this work on a PDF that already has selectable text?
It can, but it's the wrong tool for that case — PDF to Text extracts the existing text instantly and exactly. OCR PDF is meant for scanned pages or photographed documents that are just an image, with no real text underneath yet.
Will the searchable PDF look different from my scan?
No — the original page image is kept exactly as it was; the recognized text is placed on top but rendered fully transparent, so nothing changes visually. You (and search/Ctrl+F) can still select and search the text, but the page looks like an unaltered scan.
What if OCR misreads some words?
OCR accuracy depends on scan quality — a clean, high-resolution, straight scan reads far more reliably than a blurry or skewed photo. It won't be 100% perfect on messy input, same as any OCR engine, but a decent scan typically recognizes cleanly.
Can it read handwriting?
Not reliably — Tesseract (like most OCR engines) is built and trained for printed text. Handwritten notes may partially recognize but shouldn't be relied on.
How long does a large PDF take?
Recognition runs page by page in your browser, so it scales roughly linearly with page count — a 5-page document finishes in well under a minute; a 100-page document takes proportionally longer, since it's your device doing the work, not a server.
Is my document uploaded anywhere for OCR?
No — the OCR engine itself runs as WebAssembly inside your browser tab. The only network requests are one-time downloads of the engine and language files from a public CDN; your actual PDF and everything recognized from it never leaves your device.
What's the difference between the two output options?
Searchable PDF keeps the original look of every page and adds an invisible, selectable text layer — the best choice if you still need the document to look like a scan. Plain text (.txt) discards the images entirely and gives you just the recognized words — smaller and simpler if all you need is the text itself.
Is this really free, and is there a file size limit?
Yes — no account, no paywall. Since processing happens in your browser's memory rather than uploading anywhere, the practical limit is your device's available RAM, not a server quota. Very large files (500+ pages) may run slower, especially for Compress and PDF→JPG.
Does anything about my file get sent anywhere?
No. Every tool runs with pdf-lib/pdf.js loaded in this page; your file is read into browser memory and never leaves it. The only network call this app makes for your account is Supabase auth — and that only stores which tool you ran and when, never file content.
Why isn't Word/Excel/PowerPoint → PDF included?
Converting Office formats accurately needs a real rendering engine (what Word or LibreOffice use internally) — no browser library does this reliably. Rather than ship a broken version, it's left out.
Does TechDriven Tools have OCR (text recognition)?
Yes — OCR PDF recognizes text in scanned or photographed pages using Tesseract.js, running entirely on your device, and gives you a searchable PDF or a plain text file. Nothing is uploaded for this either.
Can I use this without an internet connection?
Once the page and its libraries have loaded once, yes — the tools themselves need no network access. Signing in and viewing history do require a connection, since those talk to Supabase.
What happens to the "history" if I sign in?
Only a row per tool run — the tool's name and a timestamp. No filename, no file content, ever. You can see the full list any time via the History button.
Are the non-PDF utilities (password generator, JSON formatter, etc.) private too?
Yes — same rule as the PDF tools. Word Counter, Case Converter, Password Generator, UUID Generator, Base64, Hash Generator, JSON Formatter and JWT Decoder all run with plain JavaScript already loaded in this page; nothing you type or paste is sent anywhere.
OCR PDF, in depth
100% free, browser-only, no registration, works on mobile, 12 languages, searchable PDF or plain text.
Features
On-Device Recognition
Text recognition runs as WebAssembly in your browser tab — your document is never uploaded for this.
Searchable PDF Output
Keeps every page looking exactly like the original scan, with an invisible text layer added underneath for search and select.
Plain Text Output
Skip the PDF entirely and get just the recognized words as a .txt file.
12 Languages
English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Hindi, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Russian, and Japanese.
Page-by-Page Progress
Watch recognition progress through your document in real time instead of waiting on a black box.
Works on Multi-Page PDFs
Every page is recognized in turn and combined into one output file — no per-page manual work.
Why use OCR PDF
- Make old scans searchable so Ctrl+F actually finds something in a document that's currently just a picture of text.
- Turn a photographed document into real text when you need to copy a paragraph out of it instead of retyping it by hand.
- Recover text from a paper form or printed page after photographing or scanning it, without a separate OCR app.
- Archive scanned records properly so they're indexable and searchable years later, not just a stack of image files.
- Extract quotes or data from a scanned report without manually transcribing it.
Supported uses
Scanned Contracts & Forms
Photographed Receipts & Notes
Old Paper Archives
Printed Reports & Articles
Multi-Language Documents
Textbook & Handout Pages
How TechDriven Tools compares
| Feature | TechDriven Tools | Other Online Tools | Desktop Software | Command-Line Tools |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Privacy | Runs on-device, never uploaded | Usually uploads to a server for OCR | Local, but needs install | Local, fully offline |
| Cost | Always free | Often capped or paywalled | Often paid | Free, but needs setup (e.g. tesseract-ocr) |
| Installation | None — runs in browser | None | Download & install required | Requires tools installed first |
| Mobile-friendly | Yes | Varies by site | No | No |
| Multi-language | 12 languages | Varies by site | Depends on install | Depends on language packs |
| Output choice | Searchable PDF or plain text | Varies by site | Varies | Varies by flags |
Privacy
- Your PDF is never uploaded — recognition happens inside your browser tab using WebAssembly.
- The only network requests are one-time downloads of the OCR engine and language data from a public CDN, not your document.
- No registration or account required to use any of this.
- Downloads come straight from your browser's own memory to your device.
What is OCR
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is the process of analyzing an image of text and converting it into actual, computer-readable text — the difference between a photo of a page and a document you can select, copy, and search. A scanned or photographed page, by itself, is just a picture as far as a computer is concerned; there's no way to search it or copy a sentence out of it until OCR runs.
Benefits
The main benefit is making previously "dead" documents useful again: a stack of scanned contracts becomes searchable by client name, an archive of old paperwork becomes something you can actually query, and a photographed page of notes becomes text you can paste elsewhere instead of retyping. A searchable PDF also opens correctly in any PDF reader — the OCR text layer is standard PDF content, not a proprietary format.
How Searchable PDFs Work
A searchable PDF looks identical to the original scan because the original page image is kept untouched. What changes is that the recognized text is placed on the page too, positioned to match where each word actually appears, but rendered fully transparent. Readers see the scanned image; the PDF's text layer underneath is what your reader's search box, Ctrl+F, and copy/paste actually interact with.
Choosing the Right Language
OCR accuracy depends heavily on matching the selected language to the document's actual language — the recognition model is trained on that language's characters and common word patterns. Running English recognition on a Hindi or Arabic document (or the reverse) produces mostly garbled output, not a partial result. If a document mixes two languages, pick whichever one makes up most of the content.
Best Practices for Better OCR Accuracy
- Use a straight, well-lit scan or photo — an angled or shadowed photo of a page reads far less reliably than a flatbed scan.
- Higher resolution helps — a crisp 300 DPI-equivalent scan recognizes more accurately than a heavily compressed low-res image.
- Run Compress PDF after OCR, not before — compressing a scan first can blur text edges the OCR engine relies on.
- If a document is mostly clean printed text, OCR is usually very reliable; dense tables, unusual fonts, or handwriting are the cases where it struggles most.
Common Mistakes
The most common mistake is running OCR on a PDF that already has real, selectable text — in that case PDF to Text is faster and perfectly accurate, since there's nothing to recognize. The second is picking the wrong language, which silently produces bad results rather than an obvious error, since the engine still runs and returns something — always double-check the language matches the document before trusting the result.
Searchable PDF vs. Plain Text
Choose Searchable PDF when the document's appearance still matters — a scanned certificate, contract, or form that needs to keep looking like the original while becoming searchable. Choose Plain Text when only the words matter and you want the smallest, simplest output, for example pulling a quote or a data table's content out of a scanned report.
Security
Since recognition happens entirely inside your browser tab rather than on a server, running OCR on a sensitive scanned contract, medical form, or ID document never means trusting a third-party server with it — the only things ever downloaded are the OCR engine and language files themselves, never your document or the text recognized from it.
Mobile OCR
The language selector and output toggle are both touch-sized, and recognition runs the same way on a phone's browser as on a desktop — photograph a document with your phone, run OCR PDF, and get a searchable file back without needing a dedicated scanning app.