How to copy text from a scanned PDF on Mac
Open the scanned PDF, zoom in until the text is comfortably large, press ⌘ ⇧ 2 and drag over the paragraph you need; the text is copied when you let go. Copyable reads the page as it appears on screen, so it works in Preview, Acrobat, a browser or any other PDF viewer. It reads one area at a time and doesn’t turn the file into a searchable PDF.
How to do it with Copyable
Open the page and zoom in
Copyable reads what is on your display, so zoom the PDF until the text is clearly larger than normal reading size. This matters more for scans than for anything else.
Press ⌘ ⇧ 2 and drag over the text
Select a paragraph, a column or a whole page. On a page with two columns, select one column at a time to keep the lines in order.
Paste it
The text is in your clipboard the moment you let go, and the panel next to your selection shows it. For a table on the page, switch to Table before you drag and paste the result into a spreadsheet.
Without Copyable
The free ways, and where they stop working. If one of them covers what you need, you don’t need an app.
Export the page, then use Live Text
In Preview, choose File → Export, save the page as a PNG or JPEG image, open the image and select the text with Live Text.
Where it stops: A page at a time, and it leaves image files behind.
OCR in a PDF editor
Apps such as Adobe Acrobat Pro can recognize the text in a whole scanned PDF and make it searchable.
Where it stops: Paid, and more than you need for a paragraph.
Tips for scans
- Rotate a sideways page upright in your viewer before you capture.
- Faint photocopies, old typewriter text and very small print are the hardest cases. Check names and numbers after you paste.
- Need the whole document searchable? That is a job for a PDF editor’s OCR. Copyable is for the parts you need now.
Questions
Can Copyable make a scanned PDF searchable?
No. It copies the text of the area you select. To turn a whole scan into a searchable PDF, use a PDF editor with OCR.
Can I copy a whole page?
Yes, select the whole page. For a long document it’s one page at a time.
Does it read handwriting in scans?
Neat handwriting often works; messy notes may not. Printed text is the reliable case.
Copy text from anything on your screen
Copyable reads the text in any area you select with ⌘ ⇧ 2, on your Mac, without uploading anything. $4.99 once, plus tax where it applies. Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple silicon or Intel.
Buy for $4.99