ReMyndhow to search for text in a pdf on mac
to search for text in a pdf on mac, open the file in preview and type a word or phrase in the search field in the toolbar. apple says preview searches for the exact phrase you type, and you can switch to any match, then sort results by search rank or page order.
this guide follows apple's preview user guide for macos 27 and google's chrome help, as of october 2026, read on october 29, 2026.
download remynd for mac to search the text of pages you had open in focus, by app and date.
what are the search options in preview?
apple's preview guide describes these controls for a pdf search.
| what you want | what to click | what apple says it does |
|---|---|---|
| find a word or exact phrase | type in the toolbar search field | searches for that exact phrase |
| match any word in a phrase | the magnifying glass, then any match | searches for any word included in the phrase |
| move between results | next or previous | goes to the next or previous result |
| sort by how often it appears | search rank | sorts results by number of matches |
| sort by position | page order | sorts results by page number |
| finish searching | the delete button in the search field | the step apple gives for when you're finished |
how do you search a pdf in preview?
use the preview search field in the toolbar. apple's find text in pdfs guide gives these steps:
- open the preview app on your mac, then open the pdf.
- type a word or phrase in the search field in the preview toolbar. apple notes you may need to resize the window to see it.
- click next or previous to step through the results.
- when you're finished, click the delete button in the search field.
apple says you can search for a word or any set of characters. in our read, that means part of a word or a code should work too. apple's keyboard shortcuts list gives command f as the general shortcut to find items in a document, and command g to find the next occurrence.
how do you search for any word instead of the exact phrase?
switch the search to any match. apple says a typed phrase is matched exactly. for a match on any of its words, click the magnifying glass in the search field and pick any match.
in our read, exact phrase is the better start when you remember the wording, and any match helps when you only remember a few of the words.
how do you sort the results?
pick search rank or page order in the results. apple says search rank sorts the results by number of matches, and page order sorts them by page number.
what if the text won't select or the search finds nothing?
start with the two checks apple lists for text that won't select. apple's guide for when you can't select or copy text lists them:
- the selection tool may be set to something other than text selection. choose tools > text selection. you can also click the show markup toolbar button, then the text selection button.
- the pdf may be locked so text can't be selected or copied until you enter a password. choose tools > show inspector, click the encryption inspector button, then type it in.
in our read, if a search finds nothing for a word you can see on the page, the page may be a scanned image with no text layer. apple's current page does not say this, so treat it as our guess, not apple's.
for scanned pdfs, google's chrome help says that when you use the chrome pdf viewer, scanned pdfs of paper documents are converted automatically with optical character recognition, so their text becomes searchable and selectable. google says the conversion is completed on your device, and that a pdf with several pages might take some time.
to copy text out of a picture instead, see how to copy text from a screenshot on mac.
how many people say searching takes too much time?
62% of respondents, according to microsoft's 2023 work trend index, published may 9, 2023, say they struggle with how long they spend looking for information during the workday. the survey reached 31,000 workers across 31 markets, and 86% were looking to ai for help finding the right information and answers. in our view, paging through a long pdf for a single line is a small case of the same problem.
where does remynd fit?
remynd is a mac app that records your screen, reads text with ocr run locally through apple vision, and builds a searchable index that is kept on your mac. it takes text from the focused window only; video covers the windows you have not excluded.
text comes from the focused window only, so in our read it can only find pdf text that was on screen while it was running. it can help you find a page you had open by what it said, even when you no longer know which pdf it was in.
to look something up, press control space and type a plain-language search. results narrow by app, date or source, and you can jump straight to the moment a pdf page was showing, as long as remynd was running then and that window was not excluded. private browser windows are left out by default, and apps and sites can be excluded too. remynd is free to download and requires macos 14 or later on an apple silicon mac.
in our view, it helps most when you read something in one of many pdfs and can't recall which. if you are not sure where you saw something, see find something you saw on your screen.
limits of this guide
this guide covers preview and one browser, so a few things sit outside it.
- it follows apple's and google's guides as read for this page; menu names can differ on older versions.
- it does not cover other pdf apps, which have their own search tools that we did not check.
- apple's current preview pages do not say whether preview can search scanned pages, so we make no claim about it.
download remynd for mac to search the text you had open, by app and date.