How to Extract Text From a PDF or Image in Your Browser (OCR)
OCR pulls editable text out of a scan, screenshot, or PDF. Here is how to do it locally so a sensitive document never gets uploaded to a stranger's server.
You have a screenshot of a table, a scanned contract, or a PDF someone exported as images, and you need the text out of it. Retyping is slow and error-prone, and the obvious fix, an online OCR site, means uploading whatever the document contains.
For anything you would not email to a stranger, that upload is the problem.
What OCR is
Optical character recognition reads the shapes in an image and converts them into actual text characters. It turns a picture of words into words you can select, copy, and edit. It works on screenshots, photos of documents, scanned pages, and PDFs that are really just images.
Why uploading the document is the risk
The text you are trying to extract is often the exact thing that should stay private: a bank statement, a signed agreement, an internal report. An online OCR service processes that file on its servers, and its retention policy is something you have to trust rather than verify. The cleanest way to avoid the question is to never upload it.
How to OCR locally
File Forge runs OCR on-device. You drop in an image or a PDF, it reads the text in your browser, and it hands back the result for you to copy. The file never leaves your machine, there is no scan limit, and it works without a connection once the extension is installed.
When local OCR works well
Clear, high-contrast text reads accurately: screenshots, digital PDFs exported as images, and clean scans. Accuracy drops on handwriting, heavy skew, low resolution, or noisy backgrounds, which is true of any OCR engine. If a scan comes out rough, straightening it and increasing contrast before OCR usually helps.
The takeaway
OCR saves you from retyping, and doing it locally means even a confidential document stays on your machine. If you also need to convert that PDF to images or compress it afterward, the same tool covers it. Try File Forge, or read what actually happens to your file on an online converter.