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 an image goes through the OCR processing, it’s easy to read, select, and copy the contents to other apps.

Improved OCR technology described in this article is available in Scanner Pro 8.0 or later and in Scanner Mini 8.8.2.455. For those who previously bought Scanner, this functionality is free. For new customers, the feature comes as a part of PLUS subscription.

Scanner 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 Settings and tap Text Recognition (OCR).
2. Make sure the Automatic Text Recognition (OCR) toggle is enabled. 
3. Disable the Latin based-languages toggle and choose one language from the list.
4. Tap Save.

1. Open a scan and tap Text at 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 which is usually used in the text of your scans, tap Language at the bottom toolbar and make sure to choose the right language:

• If the language of this scan is a Latin-based language, make sure that the Latin-based language toggle is enabled. 
• If the language of the scan is not a Latin-based and differs from the one you had manually chosen in Settings, select a new language from the list and tap Reprocess.

Then, select and copy the needed part of the text, tap Copy All at the bottom toolbar, or select Share to export the text layer to other apps. When finished working with the text, tap Done at 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 Settings > Text Recognition (OCR), and disable the Automatic Text Recognition (OCR) 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 uses an on-device OCR model. That means that we don't upload the recognized text to any cloud storage and it is being safely stored on your device only. To learn how we treat your data to provide safety for your data, view our Privacy Policy. It can be found on our website or directly via Scanner Settings > Privacy Policy.

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

1. Launch Scanner and tap the Settings icon at the top left.
2. Scroll down and tap Support > Send Feedback.
3. A new email window will appear. In your message, please describe the issue.
4. Tap Send and our support team will get in touch to resolve the issue.