OCR that never leaves your Mac.
Read text out of PDFs and images using Apple Vision — entirely on your own machine.
Download the betamacOS 14 or later · Apple silicon · free while in beta
What it does
Drop in one document. Get the text out.
LocalOCR Studio takes a single PDF or image and starts reading it immediately — no configuration, no batch queue, no account. When it finishes you can copy the text, save it as a file, or create a new searchable PDF.
There is also a command-line tool and an MCP server, so the same engine works inside your own scripts and AI tooling.
What that actually means
Four things, plainly
- It runs on your Mac. Recognition happens on device, using Apple Vision.
- Nothing leaves the machine. No document contents, recognized text, filenames, paths, thumbnails or hashes are uploaded. The app makes no network requests to do its work.
- Your originals are untouched. Input files are never overwritten. A searchable PDF is written as a new file.
- Searchable output. Create a new PDF with an invisible recognized-text layer, so you can search a scan like any other document.
Who this is for
The documents you would never paste into a website
Most OCR is a web upload. That is fine for a takeout menu and completely wrong for the things people actually need read.
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MedicalRecords, lab results, insurance statements, discharge paperwork.Health information belongs to the patient, not to whoever runs the conversion server.
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FinancialTax returns, bank and brokerage statements, pay stubs, closing packets.A statement carries account numbers and a full picture of your finances in one file.
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Legal & identityContracts under NDA, filings, passports, licenses, immigration paperwork.Some of these you are contractually forbidden from handing to a third party at all.
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Work productClient material, internal reports, anything covered by a confidentiality policy."I uploaded it to a free OCR site" is a sentence nobody wants to say to their employer.
On compliance, plainly. We are not claiming a certification, and you should be skeptical of any small tool that does. The point is architectural rather than legal: there is no server holding your documents, no retention policy to take on faith, and no vendor to add to a review. Whether that satisfies a particular obligation is a decision for you and your organization.
The demo that shows you nothing
Every OCR demo shows you a document being read.
This one won't — because none of yours would ever reach us.
Beta feedback
Tell us what breaks
The beta is open — download it above, no application needed. What we need back is what went wrong, what was confusing, and what's missing.
Privacy
Two different things, and we won't blur them
The app. LocalOCR processes your documents entirely on your Mac. It does not upload document contents, recognized text, filenames, paths, thumbnails, hashes, or cache entries. Nothing about your documents reaches us, ever — including through this page.
This form. What you type into the box above is different: you are deliberately sending it to us. We store your message, and your email only if you provide one, in order to read and reply. We don't sell it, share it, or use it for anything else. Ask us to delete it and we will, within seven days.
This page. No analytics, no advertising pixels, no third-party fonts, no tracking of any kind. The only external request is Cloudflare's anti-spam check on the form.