Search a word across every page and every PDF in a folder at once. Results are grouped by document and open at the right page, words highlighted. On the device, offline.
Local documentation is almost never one document. It is a folder: a service manual running to thousands of pages, a course exported chapter by chapter, a parts catalogue with its appendices in PDF. You know the sentence you are after is in there. You no longer know which file.
Until now the only option was to open the documents one by one. Pagira's search looks through the whole folder at once.
The search draws no distinction between an HTML page and a PDF: both sit in the same folder, both get read. A procedure described in a page and its diagram attached as a PDF come back side by side, in the same list of results.
A common word can appear on a hundred pages. A list of a hundred lines tells you nothing. So Pagira groups results by document, with the number of pages concerned: you see where it is first, and expand afterwards.
The document you are currently reading is always brought to the top of the results. It is almost always the one you meant.
Tap a result and the app jumps straight to the page concerned, your words highlighted. In a web page as in a PDF, with no need to search a second time once the document is open.
Pagira returns the pages that contain all the words you typed. Not pages containing one word in three, not pages an algorithm judged close enough. It looks for what you typed and nothing else: when you are checking a torque figure or a dosage, the near-enough result is worth nothing.
If you cannot remember the exact words used in the document, the tab next door takes a question in everyday language.
A visible selector lets you narrow the search: the whole folder, the current subfolder, or just the document you have open. On a corpus mixing several manuals, that is what stops you finding the right paragraph in the wrong vehicle.
A scanned PDF is only an image: it contains no word to search for. Pagira offers "Recognise text" to read it on the device and bring it into the search like any other document. It is on demand, never automatic, and it can continue in the background while the device is plugged in.
The whole search runs on your iPhone or iPad. No account, no server, no data sent: your keywords and the content of your documents do not leave the device. So it works in a workshop with no signal, on a plane, or in a hospital ward - exactly where offline documentation is good for something.
