Recognition happens on the phone; nothing is transmitted, and the tool works offline once the app and the language pack have loaded, so do the first run while connected. OCR is heavier than most jobs: a few seconds per page in the background, cancellable at any point, and long scans are quicker on a laptop — or use Scan to PDF from phone, which sends straightened pages from the phone camera straight to your computer over an encrypted direct connection with no cloud between. Spot-check names and figures against the page, which is unchanged.
How it works
- Open Bindery in Safari and choose the scan from Files
- Pick the language and searchable-PDF output
- Save the result to Files and search it with any viewer
Questions people ask
Why is a Notes scan not searchable when I send it?
Because Live Text recognizes words at the moment you look at them and does not write them into the file. The PDF that leaves your phone is only the image. Bindery’s OCR writes an invisible text layer into the PDF, so it is searchable on any device.
Will OCR run on an older iPhone?
Yes, if Safari is current; the engine runs in the browser and needs no special hardware. It takes longer on older phones and uses memory, so a guard at intake says whether a large scan will fit, and you can cancel at any point without the job counting against your day.
Which languages can it recognize?
Eleven: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Hindi. Choose the document’s language before running; the engine uses the pack to resolve ambiguous shapes, and each pack loads once from Bindery the first time it is used.