Top 5 Document Scanner Apps for iPhone and iPad
You can remember the times you spent looking for a scanner to get a digital copy of a document. The whole process was tedious and tedious. But today, your iPhone or iPad can get similar results in seconds.
Most document scanning applications for iPhone and iPad have performed well over the years, with the difference in scanning quality being negligible. Whatever the case may be, the actual application you use may play an important role, mainly because of factors such as the intuitiveness of the user interface and the speed of processing.
Below you will find five great apps, each with their different flavors, that enable a seamless document scanning experience. In addition, they are also totally free. So, without further ado, let's review each of them.
1. App Files
Forgetting to visit the App Store. If you have iOS 13 or iPadOS running on your iPhone or iPad, the built-in Files application includes its native document scanning tool. Previously, this tool was only accessible via the Notes application (for more information, see below), but its inclusion in the Files application makes it easier to scan and read. registration of your documents.
To access this tool, start by pressing the horizontal ellipsis icon (three dots) in the upper right corner of the Files application. In the menu that appears, touch Scan Documents.
With the scanner turned on, place the camera on the document you want to scan. The scanner is equipped with an automatic detection technology: wait a few seconds and take a snapshot of the document in a few seconds.
It also allows you to adjust and rewind the document, even when scanning at right angles. There is also a manual scan mode if you prefer quality over speed.
The result should look like a copy of a real scanner, with increased contrast, you can change the colors if you want to use multiple presets. You can also continue to scan more pages, which will be a multi-page, transparent document.
Once you are satisfied, you can choose to save it to any location of the PDF Files application (locally or on supported cloud storage services). You can then preview the scanned documents, annotate them, share them with other applications, etc., in the comfort of the Files application.
If there is a disadvantage, it is the lack of optical character recognition technology. However, the scanning quality and edge detection technology are exceptional and you probably will not need anything else if you are not afraid of missing optical character recognition.
2. Notes App
The Notes application on your iPhone and iPad also has the same feature of scanning documents as the Files application. In addition, you only need to run iOS 11 or later to use it, which is useful if your device does not support iOS 13 or iPadOS. Just tap the camera-shaped icon above the on-screen keyboard, and then tap Scan Documents to scan documents immediately.
Although scanning documents via the Files application is much more convenient, using it from the Notes application is a marvel if you prefer to insert scanned images directly into your notes.
But there is also another advantage. Unlike the Files application, the Notes application offers limited OCR features that will generate search results even if the words are found in a scanned document. Very convenient. However, you can not select text or copy them to the clipboard.
In addition, you can scan your documents and transfer them outside of the Notes application. But of course, using the Files app (unless your device can not be upgraded to iOS 13 or iPadOS) works better in such cases.
3. Adobe Scan
If the document scanner in the Files application and the Notes application is not ready for use, then Adobe Scan is the most used third-party alternative. It's totally free and offers a lot of great features. Scanning Documents is a kid's game, where the application will automatically capture, crop and readjust documents quickly. You can also scan documents manually.
Adobe Scan also comes with several editing tools that work well: you can rotate images, change colors, and clean images of unwanted visual artifacts.
All scanned documents go through text recognition when they are saved. You can then manually copy the text from your scanned documents to the clipboard of the iPhone or iPad or choose to edit them with the help of a PDF editor.
Adobe Scan also offers additional scanning modes (whiteboard, form, and business card) that you can easily switch during scanning, each with its own specific features. With Business Card, you can scan business cards and easily add details to the Contacts application.
4. Office goal
Office Lens is another phenomenal document scanner for iPhone and iPad. It allows you to easily scan documents of one or more pages using manual and automatic scanning modes. The application also offers many editing tools, including the ability to add text and perform annotations before saving.
Unlike the document scanners listed above, Office Lens also supports a large number of output formats. Besides saving documents in PDF format, you can also save them directly as images in your photo library.
If you have Microsoft Word installed, you can transfer documents in DOCX format and, using OCR technology, edit it directly.
Offlice Lens also works well with OneDrive, where you can easily save your documents on the Microsoft cloud storage service and access them from other supported platforms. And if you already have OneDrive on your iPhone or iPad, you can completely ignore the installation of Office Lens and instead use the integrated OneDrive document scanner.
5. Evernote Scannable
Evernote Scannable lacks features compared to the scanners in the list. However, its automatic scanning mode is considerably faster, which greatly facilitates the scanning of multi-page documents.
When it comes to editing your documents, Evernote Scannable only offers the ability to rotate and crop. Once you are done, you can save the scanned items to your favorite Evernote notebook as images or PDFs.
You can also save the scanned documents on the film, where you can then convert them to PDF if you wish.
Go paperless
The document scanner built into the Files and Notes applications works like a charm and should help you get the job done in most cases. However, if you want to access more features, Adobe Scan and Office Lens should help you a lot with their improved editing options and totally free OCR capabilities. And for those cases where you prefer something light and fast, go for Evernote Scannable.
Then: As you have seen, not all document scanners support optical character recognition. But do not worry. Here are five ways to easily extract text from your scanned documents.