PDF Search : AI Powered for Android

I apparently tried this app a few years ago and it was, to be honest, not good enough to keep on my machine. But I recently went looking for a PDF search app and downloaded this without realizing I had already tried it before. Wow what a difference! The current version (12.13 as of this writing) is really very good. It's a totally different app than the one I recall trying before. I would ignore the old reviews and give this a try. The UI is well thought out and clean, and the searches are powerful; especially the ability to use one result set as the basis of a subsequent search. Anyway, I can't recommend this app more highly. It is exactly what I was looking for.

PDF Search worked great for about a week then stopped working. I contacted support via email, never heard back from them. Removed and reinstalled the app and it works again but now it prompts to pay a second time. Does not recognize the Restore Previous Purchase function I have asked Google for a refund. UPDATE: I figured out what happened. I had activated the app using the license key from your email. The next time the App Store prompted me to install updates I did and a different (newer?) version of PDF Search installed. That is when it stopped being recognized as PRO. I have removed everything, reinstalled from the link in my purchase email, and reactivated. Everything is working now. This is confusing and, I assume, I should never let the App Store update PDF Search and only do that from Check Updates within the app. Thanks for getting back to me.

I don't rate apps. But this app is so unique, does such an excellent job- it is almost like magic. Anyone who relies on finding and reusing information from PDFs should have this app

I'm a historian and writer and have over 10,000 Word and pdf files. Since I could no longer find what I was looking for, I decided to try to find a program that would enable me to do keyword searching. PDF Search had a lot of promise and I tried it out before purchasing it. It seemed to be what I needed so I bought it. That's when my problems started. The developer is very responsive and helpful - otherwise I would never have made it. He is not a fluent English speaker and the manuals leave a lot to be desired in terms of explaining how this program works. He patiently explained, as best he could, how to use his program. Here are two key takeways you need to know. (1) PDF Search must be used with PDF Converter, which is a free addon. Without PDF Converter, the program will not index Word files. (2) PDF Search also must be used with Libre Office. Both of these programs are integrated into PDF Search - you don't use them by themselves. I'm comfortable with Word and did not want to give that program up to learn Libre Office - you don't need to. PDF Search has a very difficult time converting Word documents into keyword searchable files without Libre Office - it hangs during the indexing process and takes forever to complete. With Libre Office installed in the Applications folder (remember - you don't need to use it - it just has to be there), the process goes quite smoothly. In the Preferences pane for PDF Search, under General, I unchecked "Animated Highlight" as I found that feature annoying. YMMV, though. Under Index, check "Microsoft Office" if you use Word. Under OCR, check "Auto detect for OCR" and uncheck the other boxes. An important caveat here: if you want the processing to go quickly, run your pdf files through an OCR processing program **before** running PDF Search. I ran mine through PDFpen Pro. If you do not do this, PDF Search will still find your keyword (it doesn't do OCR - it finds the keyword with AI, apparently), but your search results will take significantly longer to be presented. If you want PDF Search to slow to a snail's pace during the indexing process, just check "Enable Text Recognition for all documents" under the OCR tab. You will wait days for the indexing process to complete! Under the Search tab, check "Check and index new documents automatically." When you make a change to one of your Word documents, PDF Search "sees" that and updates instantly. Very cool. Do NOT click on "Reset" unless you want to wipe the slate clean and start all over. If it had not been for the help of the developer, I would never have gotten up and running. This is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill keyword search program. It is very different. I think it will prove to be a life-saver in terms of frustration at not being able to find what I wanted to find in my documents. If the developer could find someone to write a more comprehensive and English-friendly manual, I think this program would have many more users.

As an academic researcher with an abundance of PDF files from academic journals, this is an extremely valuable tool to quickly identify relevant passages in a subset of articles. I started out by using one of the provided filters (e.g., "filename:TOPIC_XYZ") to narrow down the search for potentially relevant articles on TOPIC_XYZ and then used the search function to look for specific terms within that subset. Search results on 4,000 PDFs were super fast. I love the way the program draws attention to found passages with a visual shrinking effect. Moreover, the export function of results produces a highly useful overview document of the identified passages. While I am still exploring the program, I also see many possibilities for future improvements, such as providing a point-and-click menu to execute searches with Boolean operators instead of having to type out one's search queries, improving the highlighting function (e.g., Touch Bar support & support for PopClip), being able to choose folder sets (e.g., research vs. admininstration), auto-completion/-suggestions when typing tag names, and so on. Finally, I was most impressed with the developer's responisveness to an issue that I encountered running the program on Android Catalina 10.15 (no issues on High Sierra 10.13).