OCR search on Joplin Caution

Operating system

macOS

Joplin version

3.3.13

Desktop version info

Joplin 3.3.13 (prod, darwin)

Device: darwin, Apple M3
Client ID: 62f03a2282014f12b1bd499b1be77363
Sync Version: 3
Profile Version: 47
Keychain Supported: Yes
Alternative instance ID: -

Revision: 144ed59

Backup: 1.4.3
Quick Links: 1.3.2

Sync target

Dropbox

Editor

Markdown Editor

What issue do you have?

Enabling OCR search cannot be disabled for images/PDFs that have already been processed. Once enabled, it adds a large, bright yellow panel with the search results at the top of the note, which makes it harder to view or scroll through the content of the note itself.

I’ve asked multiple times on this forum how to disable this poorly implemented addition in Joplin, but found that—while this forum may be helpful for developers—it’s not particularly useful for regular app users.

After some trial and error, I discovered a workaround:
1. Export your notebooks in .jex format.
2. Delete all Joplin content
3. Disable OCR search in the app.
4. Import the .jex notebooks back into Joplin
5. Sync Joplin

This resolves the problem for now.

I strongly encourage the developers to add a warning in the settings that OCR search cannot be undone once enabled.

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