Madiha Yaqoob
Have you ever been frustrated when you open a PDF document and discover its just an image instead of searchable text? It is a frequent event that can waste time and hinder productivity. Google is working on an update for Chrome that will remedy this problem though.
Google is developing a Chrome browser update that will allow its PDF reader to use optical character recognition (OCR) to analyze image based PDFs. This update was recently found in the Chromium Repositories. With this improvement users may search and interact with PDFs that contain a lot of images just like they would with ordinary text documents.
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This development aligns with Google’s existing use of OCR technology in various tools such as Google Lens and Google Translate. For instance, Google Lens enables users to extract text from photos instantly, while Google Translate allows real-time translation by scanning text through the camera. Leveraging this proven technology, Chrome’s PDF reader will soon make all PDFs searchable within the browser.
It is important to remember that this feature is still in its infancy though. The fact that the original change proposal was only filed a few hours ago suggests that it might take some time before people can access it. Nonetheless, once implemented, it is expected to greatly enhance user experience, addressing many instances where image-based PDFs have posed challenges.
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As the development progresses, we’ll continue to monitor the updates closely. Stay tuned for further developments on this promising Chrome enhancement.
