How to setup up fylr to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to write the human-readable content of a pixel-based file into the index, thus making in searchable.
Large files / large amount of files may temporarily slow down your instance due to increased processing requirements.
Some OCR jobs may fail to produce correct output because of source quality (fonts, external artifacts, DPI).
Special characters, pages structures and editorial features (tables, headers, footnotes etc.) are not filtered and may produce nonsensical contents.
By default, OCR is disabled for all files. This tutorial will expand on adding file types.
Add the extensions you want OCR applied to and written to the index
Example configuration of OCR to include JP(E)G, PNG, EPUB, PDF
The recipe configuration offers more options, those are not necessarily required to run OCR on new files.
Verify OCR is Working
Create a new record using the plus-icon
As soon as you save, the OCR is beginning
Locate the newly created record and open in detail view
fylr detail view of example record
Use the "Info" button to access the data available in index
In the "Advanced" tab, you will find the indexed content of the file under "_fulltext"
Info section of a fylr record displaying the indexed OCR output
To search for the extracted content, make sure that the OCR-recognizable text of your files is included in the search result by activating the checkbox in the 3-dot menu on the far right of the search bar.
Now you can find records by searching the human readable content of files - just type in the search bar as usual.
Applying OCR on Already Existing Records
OCR image-to-text will run when indexing a file. Consult Regenerating preview images for a tutorial on how to reindex one or more existing records.
