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Compress PDF

Search PDF

Find a word or phrase inside a PDF and see which pages match. Your files never leave your device — all processing happens locally in your browser.

Private by design
Your files never leave your device. All processing happens locally in your browser — no uploads, no servers.

Drop your PDF here

or click to choose a file

Your files never leave your device.

Search for a word or phrase inside your PDF. Results show which pages match and a short snippet around each hit. Scanned (image-only) PDFs have no text layer and will return no matches.

Search PDF reads the text layer of every page with PDF.js in a Web Worker and reports which pages contain your word or phrase, with a short snippet around each match. The query, the extracted text and the file stay on your device. Scanned PDFs without a text layer return an honest “no searchable text” message instead of pretending a search ran.

How it works

How to use Search PDF

  1. 1
    Drop your PDF. Drag and drop a PDF, or choose one from your device.
  2. 2
    Enter a query and options. Type a word or phrase, optionally enable case-sensitive or whole-word matching, and limit the search to a page range.
  3. 3
    Run Search PDF. PDF.js extracts each page's text locally and the search reports matching pages and snippets.
  4. 4
    Review the matches. See the total match count, the pages that matched, and the surrounding text for each hit.

Features

What this tool does

  • Reports matching pages and a snippet for each hit
  • Case-sensitive and whole-word options
  • Optional page-range search
  • No upload — the query and text never leave your device

Limitations

Things to know

  • No OCR: image-only PDFs have no text layer and cannot be searched
  • Whole-word matching uses word boundaries that are reliable for Latin text; CJK queries fall back to substring matching
  • Unusual font encodings or text drawn as curves may not extract cleanly

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does the search read scanned PDFs?

No. Scanned pages are images without a text layer, so there is nothing to search. The tool reports that instead of returning fake results. OCR is a separate, planned capability.

Is my search query sent anywhere?

No. The query and the extracted text are handled entirely in your browser. No analytics event includes the query or document text.

Why do some words not match?

Text extraction depends on how the PDF stores its fonts and character map. Ligatures, custom encodings or text converted to outlines can change what is extracted.

Can I search only part of the document?

Yes. Enter a page range such as 2-10 or 1,4,7 in the page-range field.