extract-pdf-text-on-macos-with-pypdf

name	extract-pdf-text-on-macos-with-pypdf
description	Extract text from a local PDF on macOS when native Spotlight metadata is insufficient, using python3 and pypdf.
version	1.0.1
tags	["pdf","text-extraction","macos","python","pypdf"]
tool_agnostic	true
authors	["Anders Hybertz"]
tested_on	[]

Extract PDF text on macOS with pypdf

Use this when a user provides a local PDF path and you need readable text in the CLI.

When to use

• Local PDF exists on disk
• mdls shows page count but kMDItemTextContent is null or incomplete
• pdftotext is not installed

Steps

1. Verify the file exists and note its size:
   • python3 - <<'PY'
   • Use Path(...).exists() and stat().st_size
2. Check available extraction options:
   • shutil.which('pdftotext')
   • try importing pypdf
3. If pypdf is missing, install it for the current user:
   • python3 -m pip install --user pypdf
4. Extract text page by page with PdfReader and write a sidecar text file next to the PDF or in Downloads.
5. Read the extracted .txt file in chunks for analysis.

Example extraction script

from pathlib import Path
from pypdf import PdfReader
p = Path('/path/to/file.pdf')
reader = PdfReader(str(p))
out = p.with_suffix('.txt')
chunks = []
for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages, start=1):
    text = page.extract_text() or ''
    chunks.append(f'\n\n=== PAGE {i} ===\n\n{text}')
out.write_text(''.join(chunks))
print(out)

Verification

• Confirm page count from PdfReader
• Confirm output file path exists
• Read the output text and inspect for truncation or OCR issues

Pitfalls

• Scanned PDFs may need OCR; pypdf only extracts embedded text layers
• Extracted text may contain odd glyph substitutions or line breaks
• Large PDFs should be read in chunks