Installing OCRmyPDF¶
The easiest way to install OCRmyPDF is to follow the steps for your operating system/platform. This version may be out of date, however.
These platforms have one-liner installs:
Debian, Ubuntu |
|
Windows Subsystem for Linux |
|
Fedora |
|
macOS |
|
LinuxBrew |
|
FreeBSD |
|
Conda (WSL, macOS, Linux) |
|
More detailed procedures are outlined below. If you want to do a manual install, or install a more recent version than your platform provides, read on.
Platform-specific steps
Installing on Linux¶
Debian and Ubuntu 18.04 or newer¶
OCRmyPDF versions in Debian & Ubuntu |
|
|
Users of Debian 9 (“stretch”) or later, or Ubuntu 18.04 or later, including users of Windows Subsystem for Linux, may simply
apt-get install ocrmypdf
As indicated in the table above, Debian and Ubuntu releases may lag behind the latest version. If the version available for your platform is out of date, you could opt to install the latest version from source. See Installing HEAD revision from sources. Ubuntu 16.10 to 17.10 inclusive also had ocrmypdf, but these versions are end of life.
For full details on version availability for your platform, check the Debian Package Tracker or Ubuntu launchpad.net.
Note
OCRmyPDF for Debian and Ubuntu currently omit the JBIG2 encoder.
OCRmyPDF works fine without it but will produce larger output files.
If you build jbig2enc from source, ocrmypdf 7.0.0 and later will
automatically detect it (specifically the jbig2
binary) on the
PATH
. To add JBIG2 encoding, see Installing the JBIG2 encoder.
Fedora¶
OCRmyPDF version |
|
Users of Fedora 29 or later may simply
dnf install ocrmypdf
For full details on version availability, check the Fedora Package Tracker.
If the version available for your platform is out of date, you could opt to install the latest version from source. See Installing HEAD revision from sources.
Note
OCRmyPDF for Fedora currently omits the JBIG2 encoder due to patent
issues. OCRmyPDF works fine without it but will produce larger output
files. If you build jbig2enc from source, ocrmypdf 7.0.0 and later
will automatically detect it on the PATH
. To add JBIG2 encoding,
see Installing the JBIG2 encoder.
Installing the latest version on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS¶
Ubuntu 20.04 includes ocrmypdf 9.6.0 - you can install that with apt
. To
install a more recent version, uninstall the system-provided version of
ocrmypdf, and install the following dependencies:
sudo apt-get -y remove ocrmypdf # remove system ocrmypdf, if installed
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y install \
ghostscript \
icc-profiles-free \
libxml2 \
pngquant \
python3-pip \
tesseract-ocr \
zlib1g
To install ocrmypdf for the system:
pip3 install ocrmypdf
To install for the current user only:
export PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH
pip3 install --user ocrmypdf
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS¶
Ubuntu 18.04 includes ocrmypdf 6.1.2 - you can install that with apt
, but
it is quite old now. To install a more recent version, uninstall the old version
of ocrmypdf, and install the following dependencies:
sudo apt-get -y remove ocrmypdf
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y install \
ghostscript \
icc-profiles-free \
libxml2 \
pngquant \
python3-distutils \
python3-pkg-resources \
python3-reportlab \
qpdf \
tesseract-ocr \
zlib1g \
unpaper
We will need a newer version of pip
then was available for Ubuntu 18.04:
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py && python3 get-pip.py
Then install the most recent ocrmypdf for the local user and set the
user’s PATH
to check for the user’s Python packages.
export PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH
python3 -m pip install --user ocrmypdf
To add JBIG2 encoding, see Installing the JBIG2 encoder.
Arch Linux (AUR)¶
There is an Arch User Repository (AUR) package for OCRmyPDF.
Installing AUR packages as root is not allowed, so you must first setup a
non-root user and
configure sudo.
The standard Docker image, archlinux/base:latest
, does not have a
non-root user configured, so users of that image must follow these guides. If
you are using a VM image, such as the official Vagrant image, this work may already
be completed for you.
Next you should install the base-devel package group. This includes the standard tooling needed to build packages, such as a compiler and binary tools.
sudo pacman -S base-devel
Now you are ready to install the OCRmyPDF package.
curl -O https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/snapshot/ocrmypdf.tar.gz
tar xvzf ocrmypdf.tar.gz
cd ocrmypdf
makepkg -sri
At this point you will have a working install of OCRmyPDF, but the Tesseract install won’t include any OCR language data. You can install the tesseract-data package group to add all supported languages, or use that package listing to identify the appropriate package for your desired language.
sudo pacman -S tesseract-data-eng
As an alternative to this manual procedure, consider using an AUR helper. Such a tool will automatically fetch, build and install the AUR package, resolve dependencies (including dependencies on AUR packages), and ease the upgrade procedure.
If you have any difficulties with installation, check the repository package page.
Note
The OCRmyPDF AUR package currently omits the JBIG2 encoder. OCRmyPDF works fine without it but will produce larger output files. The encoder is available from the jbig2enc-git AUR package and may be installed using the same series of steps as for the installation OCRmyPDF AUR package. Alternatively, it may be built manually from source following the instructions in Installing the JBIG2 encoder. If JBIG2 is installed, OCRmyPDF 7.0.0 and later will automatically detect it.
Alpine Linux¶
To install OCRmyPDF for Alpine Linux:
apk add ocrmypdf
Mageia 7¶
There is no OS-level packaging available for Mageia, so you must install the dependencies:
# As root user
urpmi.update -a
urpmi \
ghostscript \
icc-profiles-openicc \
jbig2dec \
pngquant \
python3-pip \
python3-distutils-extra \
python3-pkg-resources \
python3-reportlab \
qpdf \
tesseract \
tesseract-osd \
tesseract-eng \
tesseract-fra
To install ocrmypdf for the system:
# As root user
pip3 install ocrmypdf
ldconfig
Or, to install for the current user only:
export PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH
pip3 install --user ocrmypdf
Other Linux packages¶
See the Repology page.
In general, first install the OCRmyPDF package for your system, then optionally use the procedure Installing with Python pip to install a more recent version.
Installing on macOS¶
Homebrew¶
OCRmyPDF is now a standard Homebrew formula. To install on macOS:
brew install ocrmypdf
This will include only the English language pack. If you need other languages you can optionally install them all:
brew install tesseract-lang # Optional: Install all language packs
Note
Users who previously installed OCRmyPDF on macOS using
pip install ocrmypdf
should remove the pip version
(pip3 uninstall ocrmypdf
) before switching to the Homebrew
version.
Note
Users who previously installed OCRmyPDF from the private tap should
switch to the mainline version (brew untap jbarlow83/ocrmypdf
)
and install from there.
Manual installation on macOS¶
These instructions probably work on all macOS supported by Homebrew, and are for installing a more current version of OCRmyPDF than is available from Homebrew. Note that the Homebrew versions usually track the release versions fairly closely.
If it’s not already present, install Homebrew.
Update Homebrew:
brew update
Install or upgrade the required Homebrew packages, if any are missing.
To do this, use brew edit ocrmypdf
to obtain a recent list of Homebrew
dependencies. You could also check the .workflows/build.yml
.
This will include the English, French, German and Spanish language packs. If you need other languages you can optionally install them all:
brew install tesseract-lang # Option 2: for all language packs
Update the homebrew pip:
pip3 install --upgrade pip
You can then install OCRmyPDF from PyPI, for the current user:
pip3 install --user ocrmypdf
or system-wide:
pip3 install ocrmypdf
The command line program should now be available:
ocrmypdf --help
Installing on Windows¶
Native Windows¶
Note
Administrator privileges will be required for some of these steps.
You must install the following for Windows:
Python 3.7 (64-bit) or later
Tesseract 4.0 or later
Ghostscript 9.50 or later
Using the Chocolatey package manager, install the following when running in an Administrator command prompt:
choco install python3
choco install --pre tesseract
choco install ghostscript
choco install pngquant
(optional)
The commands above will install Python 3.x (latest version), Tesseract, Ghostscript and pngquant. Chocolatey may also need to install the Windows Visual C++ Runtime DLLs or other Windows patches, and may require a reboot.
You may then use pip
to install ocrmypdf. (This can performed by a user or
Administrator.):
pip install ocrmypdf
Chocolatey automatically selects appropriate versions of these applications. If you are installing them manually, please install 64-bit versions of all applications for 64-bit Windows, or 32-bit versions of all applications for 32-bit Windows. Mixing the “bitness” of these programs will lead to errors.
OCRmyPDF will check the Windows Registry and standard locations in your Program Files
for third party software it needs (specifically, Tesseract and Ghostscript). To
override the versions OCRmyPDF selects, you can modify the PATH
environment
variable. Follow these directions
to change the PATH.
Warning
As of early 2021, users have reported problems with the Microsoft Store version of Python and OCRmyPDF. These issues affect many other third party Python packages. Please download Python from Python.org or Chocolatey instead, and do not use the Microsoft Store version.
Windows Subsystem for Linux¶
Install Ubuntu 20.04 for Windows Subsystem for Linux, if not already installed.
Follow the procedure to install OCRmyPDF on Ubuntu 20.04.
Open the Windows command prompt and create a symlink:
wsl sudo ln -s /home/$USER/.local/bin/ocrmypdf /usr/local/bin/ocrmypdf
Then confirm that the expected version from PyPI () is installed:
wsl ocrmypdf --version
You can then run OCRmyPDF in the Windows command prompt or Powershell, prefixing
wsl
, and call it from Windows programs or batch files.
Cygwin64¶
First install the the following prerequisite Cygwin packages using setup-x86_64.exe
:
python37 (or later)
python3?-devel
python3?-pip
python3?-lxml
python3?-imaging
(where 3? means match the version of python3 you installed)
gcc-g++
ghostscript (<=9.50 or >=9.52-2 see note below)
libexempi3
libexempi-devel
libffi6
libffi-devel
pngquant
qpdf
libqpdf-devel
tesseract-ocr
tesseract-ocr-devel
Note
The Cygwin package for Ghostscript in versions 9.52 and 9.52-1 contained a bug that caused an exception to occur when ocrmypdf invoked gs. Make sure you have either 9.50 (or earlier) or 9.52-2 (or later).
Then open a Cygwin terminal (i.e. mintty
), run the following commands. Note
that if you are using the version of pip
that was installed with the Cygwin
Python package, the command name will be pip3
. If you have since updated
pip
(with, for instance pip3 install --upgrade pip
) the the command is
likely just pip
instead of pip3
:
pip3 install wheel
pip3 install ocrmypdf
The optional dependency “unpaper” that is currently not available under Cygwin.
Without it, certain options such as --clean
will produce an error message.
However, the OCR-to-text-layer functionality is available.
Docker¶
You can also Install the Docker container on Windows. Ensure that your command prompt can run the docker “hello world” container.
Installing on FreeBSD¶
FreeBSD 11.3, 12.0, 12.1-RELEASE and 13.0-CURRENT are supported. Other versions likely work but have not been tested.
pkg install py38-ocrmypdf
To install a more recent version, you could attempt to first install the system
version with pkg
, then use pip install --user ocrmypdf
.
Installing the Docker image¶
For some users, installing the Docker image will be easier than installing all of OCRmyPDF’s dependencies.
See OCRmyPDF Docker image for more information.
Installing with Python pip¶
OCRmyPDF is delivered by PyPI because it is a convenient way to install
the latest version. However, PyPI and pip
cannot address the fact
that ocrmypdf
depends on certain non-Python system libraries and
programs being installed.
Warning
Debian and Ubuntu users: unfortunately, Debian and Ubuntu customize
Python in non-standard ways, and the nature of these customizations
varies from release to release. This can make for a frustrating
user experience. The instructions below work on almost all platforms that
have Python installed, except for Debian and Ubuntu, where you may need
to take additional steps. For best results on Debian and Ubuntu, use the
apt
packages; or if these are too old, run
apt install python3-pip python3-venv
, create a virtual environment,
and install OCRmyPDF in that environment.
For best results, first install your platform’s
version of
ocrmypdf
, using the instructions elsewhere in this document. Then
you can use pip
to get the latest version if your platform version
is out of date. Chances are that this will satisfy most dependencies.
Use ocrmypdf --version
to confirm what version was installed.
Then you can install the latest OCRmyPDF from the Python wheels. First try:
pip3 install --user ocrmypdf
You should then be able to run ocrmypdf --version
and see that the
latest version was located.
Since pip3 install --user
does not work correctly on some platforms,
notably Ubuntu 16.04 and older, and the Homebrew version of Python,
instead use this for a system wide installation:
pip3 install ocrmypdf
Note
AArch64 (ARM64) users: this process will be difficult because most Python packages are not available as binary wheels for your platform. You’re probably better off using a platform install on Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora.
Requirements for pip and HEAD install¶
OCRmyPDF currently requires these external programs and libraries to be
installed, and must be satisfied using the operating system package
manager. pip
cannot provide them.
Python 3.7 or newer
Ghostscript 9.15 or newer
Tesseract 4.0.0-beta or newer
As of ocrmypdf 7.2.1, the following versions are recommended:
Python 3.9 or newer
Ghostscript 9.23 or newer
Tesseract 4.0.0 or newer
jbig2enc 0.29 or newer
pngquant 2.5 or newer
unpaper 6.1
jbig2enc, pngquant, and unpaper are optional. If missing certain features are disabled. OCRmyPDF will discover them as soon as they are available.
jbig2enc, if present, will be used to optimize the encoding of monochrome images. This can significantly reduce the file size of the output file. It is not required. jbig2enc is not generally available for Ubuntu or Debian due to lingering concerns about patent issues, but can easily be built from source. To add JBIG2 encoding, see Installing the JBIG2 encoder.
pngquant, if present, is optionally used to optimize the encoding of
PNG-style images in PDFs (actually, any that are that losslessly
encoded) by lossily quantizing to a smaller color palette. It is only
activated then the --optimize
argument is 2
or 3
.
unpaper, if present, enables the --clean
and --clean-final
command line options.
These are in addition to the Python packaging dependencies, meaning that
unfortunately, the pip install
command cannot satisfy all of them.
Installing HEAD revision from sources¶
If you have git
and Python 3.7 or newer installed, you can install
from source. When the pip
installer runs, it will alert you if
dependencies are missing.
If you prefer to build every from source, you will need to build pikepdf from source. First ensure you can build and install pikepdf.
To install the HEAD revision from sources in the current Python 3 environment:
pip3 install git+https://github.com/jbarlow83/OCRmyPDF.git
Or, to install in development
mode,
allowing customization of OCRmyPDF, use the -e
flag:
pip3 install -e git+https://github.com/jbarlow83/OCRmyPDF.git
You may find it easiest to install in a virtual environment, rather than system-wide:
git clone -b master https://github.com/jbarlow83/OCRmyPDF.git
python3 -m venv
source venv/bin/activate
cd OCRmyPDF
pip3 install .
However, ocrmypdf
will only be accessible on the system PATH when
you activate the virtual environment.
To run the program:
ocrmypdf --help
If not yet installed, the script will notify you about dependencies that need to be installed. The script requires specific versions of the dependencies. Older version than the ones mentioned in the release notes are likely not to be compatible to OCRmyPDF.
For development¶
To install all of the development and test requirements:
git clone -b master https://github.com/jbarlow83/OCRmyPDF.git
python3 -m venv
source venv/bin/activate
cd OCRmyPDF
pip install -e .[test]
To add JBIG2 encoding, see Installing the JBIG2 encoder.
Shell completions¶
Completions for bash
and fish
are available in the project’s
misc/completion
folder. The bash
completions are likely zsh
compatible but this has not been confirmed. Package maintainers, please
install these at the appropriate locations for your system.
To manually install the bash
completion, copy
misc/completion/ocrmypdf.bash
to /etc/bash_completion.d/ocrmypdf
(rename the file).
To manually install the fish
completion, copy
misc/completion/ocrmypdf.fish
to
~/.config/fish/completions/ocrmypdf.fish
.