Text Recognition (OCR)

Optical character recognition (OCR) is an intelligent text recognition technology that recognizes text in your scans and makes them searchable. Once a scan or image goes through OCR processing, it’s easy to read, select, and copy its contents into other apps.

Improved OCR technology described in this article is available in Scanner Pro 8.0 or later. For those who previously bought Scanner Pro, this functionality is free. For new customers, the feature is included with a Plus subscription.

Scanner Pro recognizes text in automatically preselected Latin-based languages by default. To switch to another language to process your scans, follow these steps:

1. Open the Scanner Pro Settings and tap Text Recognition (OCR).
2. Make sure the Automatic Text Recognition (OCR) toggle is enabled. 
3. Choose from the language bundles: Latin Bundle, Chinese+Bundle, Japanese+Bundle, Korean+Bundle, Cyrillic Bundle, Other Languages. You can see which languages are included in each bundle when you tap them. 
4. Tap Save.

1. Open a scan, then tap Text in the bottom toolbar.
2. Choose the Document or the Text tab at the top. The Document tab contains your scan with a text layer upon it, while the Text tab contains text extracted from the scan.
3. If the language of the scan differs from the one that is usually used in the text of your scans, tap Language at the bottom toolbar and make sure to choose the right language:

• Make sure the required language bundle is enabled. 
• If the language of the scan differs from the one you had manually chosen in Settings, select a new language from the list and tap Reprocess.

Finally, you have 3 ways to save or share the final result: 

• Select and copy the needed part of the text
• Tap Copy All in the bottom toolbar
• Tap Share to export the text layer to other apps

When finished working with the text, tap Done in the top-right corner. 

The Automatic Text Recognition is enabled by default, and this allows you to quickly recognize and search through the contents of your scans. To turn it off, open the Scanner Pro Settings > Text Recognition (OCR), and disable the Auto Text Recognition toggle. After that, you’ll be asked whether to recognize text or not every time you tap Text at the bottom toolbar or try searching within the document.

Please note that Scanner Pro uses an on-device OCR model. That means we don't upload the recognized text to any cloud storage; it's safely stored on your device only. To learn how we treat your data to ensure its safety, view our Privacy Notice. It can be found on our website or directly via Scanner Pro Settings > Privacy Notice.

If you’re experiencing any issues with the Text Recognition feature, please make sure you have the latest app version installed. Next, try quitting the app and launching it again. If the situation hasn’t been resolved at this point, please contact our support team by following these steps:

1. Launch Scanner Pro and tap the Settings icon at the top left.
2. Scroll down and tap Help & Support. 
3. Tap Get Assistance to get quick help from our chatbot.
4. If you're using the Scanner Pro Plus subscription, tap Priority Support, and our support team will get in touch to resolve the issue.