Search text in a PDF

Find words and phrases in any PDF, with accent-insensitive search support.

Use the search feature to find any word or phrase in a PDF document, even in scanned files processed with OCR.

Open search

1. Click the Search tab in the left sidebar, or press ⌘ F (Mac) / Ctrl F (Windows).
2. Type the word or phrase. Results appear instantly, grouped by page, with the first match highlighted on the page.
3. Toggle Match diacritics to require exact accent matching.
4. Use the ◀ ▶ arrows to step through results.

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Search for a word

1. Type the word or phrase in the search field.
2. Results are highlighted on the page. The matching text is shown in a list below the field.
3. Tap or click a result to jump to that page and centre the view on the match.
4. Use the ▲ and ▼ arrows (or press Return / Enter) to step through results one by one.

Accent-insensitive search

Kiwi PDF can find text regardless of accents and diacritics. For example, searching for resume also finds résumé.

To control this, use the Match diacritics switch. When it is off (default), accents are ignored. Turn it on to require an exact accent match.

Tips

• Search is case-insensitive by default — "PDF" and "pdf" return the same results.
• If the PDF was created from scanned pages, search works only after OCR has been applied (see OCR a scanned PDF).
• Very large PDFs may take a moment to index on first search.