Testing version: Version 2.0 (10209); iPhone 11 Pro
What were you doing: scanning document
What feature did you use: scan document from Bear; import pdf from Apple Notes
What happened: PDF text not searchable
What did you expect to happen: PDF text searchable
The PDF text search feature works for Adobe-created PDF documents imported from the web and other mobile PDF scan apps (e.g., Scanner Pro). However, it will not work for documents scanned into Bear as PDFs (r-click in note, scan documents) or PDFs imported from the Apple Notes app. PDF text search for the same PDF in the Apple Notes app works but not after the PDF is imported into Bear.
This is not a bug (even if it’s not the desired behavior), the PDFs generated by the Apple document scan don’t contain any text, they are just photos inserted inside a PDF shell.
We can and should run the OCR on PDFs’ pages that don’t contain text, making those pdf searchable (not as good as having real text inside the pdf, but it’ll be good enough).
That’s fine. But, if this is the intended behavior, then I would make it very clear to users that their documents won’t be OCR-searchable if they use Bear (or Apple Notes) to scan anything. They’ll have to continue to use a third-party document scanning app and importing them into Bear if they want to search the PDFs.
I have a shortcut to turn PDFs into photos (the action is Make image from PDF page), and those photos are working fine with OCR search. I also find it an easier way to see contents in a note. I wouldn’t use it on a standard PDF, only for handwritten notes. Another benefit is that you can encode to a much smaller size JPG while retaining detail.
