Offline-first PDF OCR

QuickPdfOcr

OCR scanned PDFs in seconds — locally, with a clean desktop UI.

Drag and drop a PDF, click Start OCR, then copy the extracted text to your clipboard. Built with PySide6 (Qt6), powered by Apple Vision on macOS and Tesseract OCR on Windows/Linux.

What It Does

QuickPdfOcr is a lightweight PDF OCR application that helps you extract text from image-based or scanned PDFs using Apple Vision on macOS and Tesseract on Windows/Linux. It's designed to be straightforward: choose a PDF (or drag it in), run OCR, and copy the text.

Key Features

Drag & Drop

Simply drag and drop PDF files directly into the application window for instant processing.

File Picker

Browse and select PDFs using the traditional file picker if you prefer.

Native OCR Engines

Apple's Vision framework (built into macOS) and industry-standard Tesseract on Windows/Linux extract text accurately from scanned pages.

Progress & Status Updates

Real-time feedback shows processing status while OCR is running.

One-Click Copy to Clipboard

Instantly copy extracted text to your clipboard on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Error Recovery

Retry or start over options available if something fails during processing.

Modern UI

Clean, user-friendly interface with clear visual feedback throughout the process.

Fully Standalone

Pre-built executables bundle Python and PDF rendering (pypdfium2 — no Poppler, ever) on every platform. On macOS, OCR uses the Vision framework built into the OS, so there's nothing else to install. Windows/Linux need Tesseract installed separately.

Offline & Privacy-Friendly

Your documents stay on your computer. QuickPdfOcr runs locally and performs OCR on-device. No uploads, no cloud processing, no data collection. Your privacy is guaranteed.

Installation / Downloads

Recommended: Download the pre-built executable for your OS from GitHub Releases. The app is intended to be "download and run." No installation required!

Windows

Standalone .exe (Tesseract required, installed separately)

Download

macOS

universal2 .app bundle (Apple Silicon & Intel in one download, macOS 13+)

Download

Linux

Standalone executable (Tesseract required, installed separately)

Download

All executables bundle Python, PySide6, and PDF rendering (pypdfium2 — no Poppler, on any platform). macOS uses OCR from the Vision framework provided by the system — nothing else to install. Windows and Linux use Tesseract OCR, which is not bundled and must be installed separately.

For Developers

Run from source (Python) or build your own standalone binary. The project uses PySide6, pypdfium2 for PDF rendering on every platform, Apple's Vision framework for OCR on macOS, and pytesseract + Pillow for OCR on Windows/Linux.

PySide6 (Qt6)
pypdfium2
Apple Vision
Tesseract OCR
Pillow
PyInstaller
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/KSEGIT/QuickPdfOcr.git
cd QuickPdfOcr

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Run the application
python main.py

# Build your own executable
python build.py

View Documentation