PDFs that are readable by human eyes only

In plain words

PDFs that are Readable by Human Eyes Only is a tool that obscures PDF text from optical character recognition and automated crawlers by replacing standard English characters with visually identical non-English glyphs. The software is designed for individuals who need to share sensitive documents while protecting against unauthorized digital extraction and distribution. It maintains readable text for human viewers while rendering automated text recognition ineffective, offering a middle ground between image-based PDFs and standard searchable documents.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

Hi, OP here. A friend was involved in a custody battle and was afraid his ex was going to leak all of his discovery documents on the internet and he asked if there was something I could do to make it harder for bots/crawlers to find sensitive information. Originally I was going to turn all of his docs to image…

• 
  Make your PDF look scanned in browser2022 · lookscanned.io · ▲579

  Implement scanyourpdf.com in JavaScript. No backend servers needed.

• 
  PDFify2018 · pdfify.app · ▲230

  Free macOS text recognition, PDF composition & compression

• 
  Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)Jun 2026 · github.com · ▲155

  I made this because the online "make my PDF look scanned" tools want you to upload your file to their servers, which feels sketchy at best. Also, I wasn't happy with the output they produce, I wanted something that looks realistic.

• YC
  You can now cut and paste from scanned documents in Firefox2024 · ▲33

  I just realized you can now open a PDF document in Firefox and select text directly from scanned images embedded in the document (so basically transparently reliable doing OCR). It is also surprisingly reliable, only sometimes mistaking a "oh" for a "zero" in a long string of numbers. I neither know when this was introduced nor who added this feature, but from the bottom of my heart: thank you, thank you, thank you, you have made my daily life a lot easier. I also haven't really explored the limits of the feature and under what conditions it starts failing, but: in my daily workflow so far,…

• 
  PDF to MD by LLMs – Extract Text/Tables/Image Descriptives by GPT4o2024 · github.com · ▲191

  I've developed a Python API service that uses GPT-4o for OCR on PDFs. It features parallel processing and batch handling for improved performance. Not only does it convert PDF to markdown, but it also describes the images within the PDF using captions like `[Image: This picture shows 4 people waving]`. In testing with NASA's Apollo 17 flight documents, it successfully converted complex, multi-oriented pages into well-structured Markdown. The project is open-source and available on GitHub. Feedback is welcome.

• CS
  Convert scanned documents into searchable PDFs2015 · searchablepdfs.org · ▲73

• 
  Lofi Cities – Pixel-art city nights with browser-generated lofi▲319

  Endless lofi beats composed live in your browser, over pixel-art nights in Paris, Tokyo, New York, Hong Kong, Sydney, San Francisco and more. Free, no sign-up.

  Work · 25d ago · loficities.com

• 
  Smooth Recorder▲257

  Mac screen recordings that look edited when you hit stop

  Work · 19d ago · smoothrecorder.com

• 
  Figma Specs▲223

  A container for your context that lives on the Figma canvas

  Work · 4d ago · figma.com

• 
  The rarest tech books and docs you've probably never read▲190

  Work · 13d ago · readrare.com

• 
  Locofy.ai▲720

  Hey there, I am Honey - Co-founder at Locofy. We, along with other makers, have been building Locofy.ai to help massively accelerate the builders - the designers, developers, product managers & founders, and we're excited to share it today with the HN Community. Locofy.ai simply converts designs into production-ready frontend code for web and mobile apps. It adapts to your preferred design tools, tech stack, and workflows with ease and lets you launch upto 4x faster, while letting designers design the way they want and giving high-quality responsive code that developers love. With this…

  Dev tools · 2022 · locofy.ai

• PO
  Porting OpenBSD Pledge() to Linux▲571

  Life & fun · 2022 · justine.lol

• 
  PocketBase – Open Source realtime backend in one file▲563

  Open Source realtime backend in 1 file. Contribute to pocketbase/pocketbase development by creating an account on GitHub.

  Dev tools · 2022 · github.com

• 
  ruttl▲552

  Visual & Design Feedback Tool that helps you review design, content and report bugs on websites, applications, PDFs and images.

  Dev tools · 2022 · ruttl.com

• 
  Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid▲537

  Hello, HN - I wanted to share this puzzle game I made during my vacation. I'm rather fond of the pipes puzzle where your goal is to restore a scrambled network of connections by rotating tiles. It's usually played on a grid of squares and this all started when I decided to make a programmatic solver for that kind of puzzle. Then I realized that with some minor changes the solver could generate new puzzle instances. I thought about what kind of puzzle to make and someone suggested a hexagonal grid. Adapting the generator wasn't too hard but then I had to create a way to play this variant. So…

  Life & fun · 2022 · hexapipes.vercel.app

• 
  Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking▲536

  We're building Parsnip to create a "tech tree" of cooking skills that allows anyone to level up on the building blocks of cooking knowledge while tracking their progress over time. It took us a few iterations to figure out the right product; here's the story of our latest pivot: [https://parsnip.substack.com/p/a-new-hope] The goal is to create a personalized way to learn any recipe on the Internet, then use this as a springboard to help home cooks of all levels solve the problem of repeated meal planning in a 10x better way:…

  Work · 2022 · parsnip.ai