I just scanned an invoice to pdf via a Brother MFC printer/scanner, and I cannot highlight any of the text in it in Preview. How can I run OCR on this document in Preview? I do not see any menu option or anything in Help menu.
Only works on latest macOS. Also you have to wait a bit for the OCR to take place and there are no indication whatsoever the system is working on it. When it’s done, you can simply select the text.
I've never gotten OCR to work on scanned pdfs. PNG files / screenshots - instant ocr. Very bizarre behavior.
I have had this pdf open in Preview for 30+ min in the latest macOS. I think this is the Live Text functionality mentioned in other comments, but it does not work on PDFs, only images and whatnot.
I think it also requires a M1 processor.
No, that was the early betas but by final release it works on Intel too. I believe if it runs Monterey, it can do LiveText.
The feature is called Live Text, and it was released in macOS Monterey.
I do not see any indication that Live Text has functionality to perform OCR on PDFs.