I have found the same.
I must have slept thru something, this topic has a couple of references to MacOS having built-in OCR.
I opened Image Capture in Sequioa 15.2 and searched its Help for OCR and no relevant results were shown.
I just searched online for âmacos ocrâ and a few results were there referencing Live Text and âdoes macos have built-in ocr? yesâ statements with no further info, ocr products, technical info etc.
When I entered âocrâ in the search field at the page
no results came up.
Ack!
I saw OCR as a scan option in Preview but couldnât get it to work
I was very surprised when I saw that Appleâs Live Text was introduced already in Monterey (Oct 2021).
Almost time for a @ace Do you use it?/Did you know this? session 
Thanks Mr. Gewecke,
I looked at the link and since I have Live Text turned off it didnât seem applicable. The page had a link to âregions/languagesâ for various features and the link for Live Text showed only languages, not regions. I am in Europe and use a couple of languages.
Iâve used the text-finding feature in Preview for years, and it mostly works nicely. I donât know much about pdf files âunder the hoodâ though.
Iâll keep searching. Maybe just having a bad keyword day.
Thanks Ms. D,
I just looked thru all the menus in Preview and didnât see an option for OCR, where did you see it please?
Are you unable to turn it on in system settings > general > language & region > live text?
If you can turn it on, does it not work?
Where exactly are you located and what languages do you need?
Iâm in Ventura. In Preview, File/Import from
Under âKindâ Iâve selected Text
When PDF is selected for Format, there is an OCR checkbox.
There must be a step Iâm missing through because the resulting file is not OCR. DevonThink does it right after the scan so thatâs what Iâm used to.
Thanks for the follow up! I have specifically turned it off. I have no need to use text found in images and donât want anyone or any thing analyzing my photos for any reason.
Shazam, thanks for that Ms. D!
I usually use a multifunction device for scanning things that donât fit thru a Fujitsu Scansnap, which we have set for scanning documents including OCR. Hadnât thought to use the other one for that.
The OCR checkbox I found as described in Image Capture and Preview in Sequioa 15.2 connected to the MFD but is not available in a Sierra OS Mac.
I used to use PDFPen Pro on PDFs i downloaded or received by email that didnât seem to have findable text but I stopped doing that for some reason.
Oh well, apologies for this diversion off the Topic theme, upon which I plan to add here in future, I have ordered a Brother MFD that should be OCR capable.
Youâre welcome! I also have Sierra and found the same as you, but my other machine had it. Iâm going to have to look up how to use it, but with DevonThink and Cisdem PDF Converter I am probably ok.
What printer did you order? I am in the âdo I put parts into my OKI or buy a new printerâ mode myself.
Yes, I just did a scan to PDF in Preview (Sequoia â I think it was my first document scan since I moved from Mojave last month!) and noticed âEmbed textâ as an option when saving.
I just scanned a document on my Epson XP-6100 via Preview, and when setting it to go to a PDF, thereâs an OCR option. But it seemed to freeze on it after making the scan. So I closed it, redid the scan without the OCR option, and saved it in Preview with the âEmbed Textâ option.
Hello Diane D, the BROTHER MFC-J1010DW. Havenât recâd it yet to know any more. Never owned a Brother printer before.
I got another Brother printer L8690CDW and have the same experience. It scans very fast due to the double side scanning. Much faster than the big Canon machines at my work place. It takes some serious desk space thoughâŚ
In Sequoiaâs Image Capture, in the right pane, with either scan mode selected, using Format PDF, under the âCombine into single documentâ checkbox, there is an OCR checkbox. Possibly thatâs scanner specific? Mine is a Brother MFC-3770CDW. But just now I selected my old Brother MFC-5890CN, and once again the OCR checkbox is still there. I could dust off my old Epson V600 to see if the OCR checkbox is still there, but perhaps someone else on here on Sequoia could check to see if that checkbox is present for their scanner?
I have an Epson Workforce scanner, and itâs there when I scan with Image Capture or Preview. Testing with one document reveals that it works, but not very well. Professional scanning software will allow you to specify the text flow, but Appleâs built-in scanning OCR just reads everything on the same level as one continuous line, regardless of columns, pull-out quotes, sidebars, etc.
One warning about Epson multifunction devices. I had a Workforce printer/scanner, and when the printer portion suddenly stopped working due to a cryptic error number, Epson said I had to return it to the factory to fix it. Since this is a printer that weighed 42 pounds (it printed 11x17 tabloid sheets), I declined to do that as it would have cost a fortune in shipping.
I thought I could still use it as a scanner, though. Except that the scanner function would not work because the printer part was broken! Really dumb design. (Iâve heard of similar situations with printers that wonât print in black because a color cartridge is missing/empty, etc.) Just a good reminder that multifunction devices can be problematic and arenât always the best.
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Maybe my expectations are wrong, but after learning about the Image Capture/Preview OCR scanning Text Document options, I tried it and⌠when searching for a string of clearly defined readable text in the scan using Launch Bar or Spotlight Search, the document was not found.
When scanning with the many years old Fujitsu ScanSnap with OCR turned on, scanned text is usually findable with those searches within seconds.
So⌠does anyone know, when using this OCR feature in Image Capture is the resulting found text only âfindableâ when the document is already open in Preview or should the document be findable by its OCRâd text entered in Spotlight Search or Launchbar?