PDF Search — find it, and ask about it
PDF Search reads every word of every document you own and makes it findable in
the time it takes to type. Then it goes further: ask a question in plain words
and get an answer, with the exact pages it came from.
Built for people who live in documents — students, lawyers and researchers.
ASK YOUR DOCUMENTS ANYTHING — NEW
AI Chat answers questions about your library in plain language. Ask "can I end
my lease early?" and it searches your documents, reads the pages that matter,
and answers — citing the page each fact came from, so you can check it yourself.
• Chat about your whole library, or the one document you are reading
• Every answer carries page references you can tap
• Conversations are saved, so you can pick one up later
• Runs on your device, or on Apple's Private Cloud Compute
AI Chat needs Apple Intelligence: an iPhone 15 Pro or later, or an iPad with an
M-series chip, running iOS 26 or later.
SEARCH THAT RANKS, NOT JUST MATCHES
Ordinary search tells you a word exists somewhere. PDF Search scores every page
on how well it answers you — where the words appear, how close together they
are, whether they land in a heading — and puts the strongest first.
• Results grouped by document, with every matching page and its rank
• Jump straight to the page, your words highlighted in context
• Search everything at once, or narrow to a folder or tag
• Export results to share or keep
LANGUAGE, NOT JUST LETTERS
Indexing uses tokenizing and lemmatization, so search understands the shape of
a word. Look for "hike" and find "hiking"; look for "children" and find
"child". Stems and near matches are covered too.
WORDS LOCKED IN PICTURES
Built-in text recognition reads photographed receipts, scanned contracts and
screenshots of slides, and adds every word to your index — so a picture of a
page is as searchable as the page itself. It covers every language your device
supports.
The built-in scanner turns paper documents, notes and cards into PDFs, reads
them as it goes, and files them with everything else — searchable from the
moment they land.
MORE THAN PDFS
Index PDFs alongside Microsoft Office documents (Word, PowerPoint), iWork files
(Pages, Keynote), rich text, plain text and logs, source code, and pages saved
from the web. Turn any format off to skip it.
KEEP A LARGE LIBRARY IN ORDER
• Folders on device or in iCloud, plus any folder or file you point the app at
• Tags, to cut across folders however you think
• Bookmarks with notes, gathered in one place across every document
• A document's table of contents, to move around a long file quickly
• Highlights and annotations while you read
• Index status at a glance: what is indexed, what is queued
YOUR MAC, IN YOUR POCKET
Run PDF Search on your Mac and sync over Wi-Fi with a single click. Documents
come across with their index intact, so your iPhone or iPad need not do the
work twice.
PRIVATE BY DEFAULT
Indexing and search happen on your device. Your documents stay yours.
FREE AND PRO
The free version indexes and searches your documents and opens the top-ranked
result. Pro unlocks everything else:
• AI Chat, with page references
• Search inside images and scans
• Scan paper to PDF
• Plurals, stems and near matches
• Every ranked result, not just the first
• Export, tag and de-duplicate
Pro comes as a monthly or annual subscription, or a one-off lifetime unlock —
one payment, yours for good, no renewals.
SUBSCRIPTION TERMS
Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. A
subscription renews automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the
end of the current period, and renewal is charged within 24 hours of that.
Manage or cancel any time in your Apple Account settings. An unused part of a
free trial is forfeited when a subscription is bought.
Privacy Policy: https://pdfsearch.app/privacy.html
Terms of Use: https://pdfsearch.app/terms.html
I haven't seen another iOS app that will search multiple Word files at once and show you full results, but this app does. Need to see if a word is spelled consistently across different Word files? Start typing the word in and it will show you a list of words across all your chosen files that start with those letters. Now you can easily see if you have a misspelled version of that word. Choose the one you want and arrow through each instance to see them in the context of the book. It is extremely fast, thorough, and stable. I've been using for months with no problems. My copyeditor wishlist would be: 1. Ability to find hyphenated terms. Currently if I type in counter, it won't show counter-intelligence in the list (but if I hit find, it will find it). Would be nice to see it in the list to find discrepancies at a glance.2. Ability to search for punctuation, to help me find punctuation issues. 3. Ability to sort results in order of alphabetical files (if files are named ch 1, ch 2, etc., to find results in that order) instead of the order the app chooses. (I know the app chooses the order based on AI and how relevant the term is, which is really cool, but I just need a regular sequential order.) That said, it's still very clear which file each result is located. 4. Ability to specify "only search this EXACT spelling." For instance, I typed in "prophec" in hopes of finding "prophecy" and "prophecies" but it found several instances of "prophet," which I didn't want.Overall, very happy I found this app. Before this, I could only do these multiple-file searches on my computer. (Other iOS apps such as the built-in Dropbox search will show you a list of results, but then you have to open each file and search again to see the full context, which is a pain.) Thanks for creating this helpful app!
Developer Response
Thank you for these feedbacks. App is getting better with them. I have just published a new version. I hope you will like it. Please always feel free to contact our support for any kind of feature request.
A Superb App for Research enthusiasts without equal
A f1969
I ran into problems with the app initially, as the issues were with my not knowing how to operate it correctly. The Excellent help from support team saved the day. I am now on a supersonic research speed. This app is the only one which could index search results with actual AI and index them and automatically rank them. The search results come super fast and handy. I would love to see an additional functionality of Boolean search as in devonthink. That would massacre the competition, if any. I wish developers good luck for future enhancements.
App Crash When It Downloads From Google Drive And Index
sultanmh
The app is excellent overall, but I hope one annoying issue can be fixed. When I connect my Google Drive to the app, it downloads all of my PDFs and other documents and indexes them locally. I have a lot of files, and when it downloads and indexes them simultaneously, the app crashes constantly. It's really inconvenient having to reopen the app again and again. I hope this issue can be fixed soon. Thanks!
Excellent!
Dan 173628
I hope the developers keep adding features because the app is amazing. I use it to search for PDF documents, such as books, and is very accurate. Specially I like the search across books series where I can just type a few words of an event or character I barely remember (from some books ago in a series) and will search and find the paragraphs with the key words typed.
Developer Response
Thank you for your kind review 🙏
Version 9.0 — the biggest release PDF Search has had.
AI CHAT
Ask your documents a question in plain words and get an answer back, with the
exact pages it came from.
• Chat about your whole library, or about the one document you are reading
• Every answer cites its pages — tap a reference to open that page and check it
• AI Chat searches with PDF Search's own ranking, so it reads the pages that
actually answer you rather than the first ones it finds
• Conversations are saved, so you can pick one up days later
• Runs on your device, or on Apple's Private Cloud Compute
AI Chat needs Apple Intelligence: an iPhone 15 Pro or later, or an iPad with an
M-series chip, running iOS 26 or later. It is part of Pro.
A COMPLETE REDESIGN
Every screen has been rebuilt.
• A new home screen that puts search and your locations first
• Search results grouped by document, with each matching page and its rank,
and a progress panel while a long search runs
• Redesigned document rows with page previews and clear indexing status
• Rebuilt tags, bookmarks and index status screens
• Empty states that tell you what to do next instead of showing nothing
• New typography, colour and iconography throughout
SETTINGS, REWORKED
Settings have been reorganised into General, Index, Search and Text
Recognition, and now scale properly with your preferred text size.
FASTER, LIGHTER
Page previews are cached, indexing yields to whatever you are doing, and
scrolling a large library stays smooth. Memory use during indexing is
substantially lower.
ALSO IN THIS RELEASE
• Purchases are verified more reliably, and restoring works more consistently
• A privacy manifest, declaring exactly what the app uses and why
• Many smaller fixes across indexing, navigation and the reader
Thank you for using PDF Search.
Version 9.0
The developer, Muharrem Ozkan, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
Identifiers
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
