With today’s advancements in technology, you no longer need to pay a premium to buy a scanner when you wish to scan documents daily as the camera in your smartphone can do it for you. Apple is known to offer easier ways to get things done if you plan to do them on your iPhone.
Now, here’s the good news! Yes, you can easily scan a document on your iPhone, regardless of how old it might be. All you need is your iPhone with a working camera and you’re all set to go.
Method #1: Using the Files app
The first and the easiest way to scan a document on an iPhone is using the Files app that comes preinstalled on iOS. To start scanning a document, open the Files app. You will be taken to the iCloud Drive folder inside Files but you will also be able to access the Document Scanner from the Browse screen as well.
Inside the iCloud Drive or Browse screen, tap on the 3-dots icon at the top right corner and select the ‘Scan Documents’ option.
This will open up iOS’ native Document Scanner on your iPhone with the camera viewfinder showing content from your main camera.
Place the document you wish to scan on a flat surface with sufficient lighting so that it can be detected by the Document Scanner.
Your next step is to position the camera in such a way that it is able to completely able to scan the document in question. Hover in and out from above the document to cover the edges of the document but not too close.
In ideal conditions, the scanner will be able to detect your document and capture the scan automatically for you. For the scanner to be able to do so, the document should be highlighted in blue when you’re pointing the camera towards it. You can skip the step provided in the following paragraph if the scanner has already scanned the document for you.
If the scanner didn’t scan the document automatically, you can click on the shutter button at the bottom center to capture the scan manually.
After the document has been scanned, you can inspect it by tapping the preview thumbnail available at the bottom left corner of your screen.
When you inspect a scanned document, you will be able to adjust the scan to fit the page by aligning all four corners. After you’re done inspecting the scanned images, you can tap on the ‘Keep Scan’ button to go back to the scanner screen.
If there’s only one page to scan, you can tap on the ‘Save’ button and skip the next step. If you have multiple pages to scan and save under the same document, then repeat the above steps to scan the remaining pages. You can use the shutter button to capture the scans quickly as the scanner takes up some time to detect a document.
After scanning all the pages, tap on the ‘Save’ button and proceed to the next step.
In the next step, you are required to name your document and choose a location for your scanned document to get saved at.
Now, rename your document by tapping the text box adjacent to the document’s preview thumbnail. Click on ‘Done’ after renaming the document.
You can select where you want to save the scanned document by tapping on either the ‘iCloud Drive’ option or ‘On My iPhone’ option and then selecting the folder you want to save it to. To save at a selected location by tapping on the ‘Save’ button at the top right corner.
Your newly scanned document will now be located in the selected folder.
Method #2: Using the Notes app
iOS lets you use its Document Scanner using the Files app but the same utility can also be accessed from within the Notes app on your iPhone. Open the Notes app on your iPhone and create a new note by tapping the pencil icon at the bottom right corner.
When a new note screen loads up, tap on the camera icon from the bottom.
Now select the ‘Scan Documents’ option from the popup menu.
You can now scan a document in a similar fashion as you did with the Files app above.
By default, the scanner will be able to detect your document and capture the scan automatically. For that to happen, the document should be highlighted in blue when you’re pointing the camera towards it. You can skip the step provided in the following paragraph if the scanner has already scanned the document for you.
If the scanner didn’t scan the document automatically, you can click on the shutter button at the bottom center to capture the scan manually.
After the document has been scanned, you can inspect it by tapping the preview thumbnail available at the bottom left corner of your screen.
When you inspect a scanned document, you will be able to adjust the scan to fit the page by aligning all four corners after tapping the crop button at the bottom. You will also be able to rotate, change the color tone, and retake the scan from the same screen.
After you’re done inspecting the scanned images, you can tap on the ‘Done’ button to go back to the scanner screen.
If there’s only one page to scan, you can tap on the ‘Save’ button and skip the next step.
When you have multiple pages to scan and save under the same document, then repeat the above steps to scan the remaining pages. You can use the shutter button to capture the scans quickly as the scanner takes up some time to detect a document. After scanning all the pages, tap on the ‘Save’ button and proceed to the next step.
After you tap on ‘Save’, your scanned document will now appear inside the new note that you create at the start of this section.
You can rename the document by long-pressing on the document, and tapping the ‘Rename’ button on the screen.
The note with the scanned document will now visible inside the Notes app home screen.
Method #3: Using Continuity Camera (On a Mac)
Apple also allows you to scan your documents and attach them directly to any work that you might be doing on your Mac using Continuity Camera. The tool can be used to scan documents and making them appear automatically inside a supported app on your Mac.
Supported apps
Continuity Camera will work inside the following apps on your Mac:
- Finder
- Notes
- Messages
- Keynote 8.2 or later
- Numbers 5.2 or later
- Pages 7.2 or later
- TextEdit
Things you may need
You will also need to take care of the following requirements before trying to use Continuity Camera on your Mac and iPhone:
- Make sure both the Mac and iPhone have WiFi and Bluetooth turned ON
- Both devices are signed in to the same iCloud email address
- Ensure that the Mac and iPhone are running on the latest versions of macOS (macOS Mojave or newer) and iOS (iOS 12 or later)
How to scan documents
To start scanning documents with Continuity Camera, open a supported app on your Mac that can attach the scanned items directly. If you wish to see the document appear on your desktop, you can Control-click (double-finger tap) on your desktop on your Mac and select Import from iPhone > Scan Documents.
When you select this option, a dialog box will appear on your Mac with the message “Scan a document with iPhone”.
At this point, the Document Scanner on your iPhone will open and you can use it in a similar fashion to the way you did with the other methods we mentioned above.
The scanner will now be able to detect your document and capture the scan automatically which you’ll know if the document is highlighted in blue.
If the scanner didn’t scan the document automatically, you can click on the shutter button at the bottom center to capture the scan manually.
After the document has been scanned, you can inspect it by tapping the preview thumbnail available at the bottom left corner of your screen.
When you inspect a scanned document, you will be able to adjust the scan to fit the page by aligning all four corners after tapping the crop button at the bottom. You will also be able to rotate, change the color tone, and retake the scan from the same screen.
After you’re done inspecting the scanned images, you can tap on the ‘Keep Scan’ button to go back to the scanner screen.
If there’s only one page to scan, you can tap on the ‘Save’ button and skip the next step.
When you have multiple pages to scan and save under the same document, then repeat the above steps to scan the remaining pages. You can use the shutter button to capture the scans quickly as the scanner takes up some time to detect a document. After scanning all the pages, tap on the ‘Save’ button and proceed to the next step.
The moment you tap ‘Save’, the scanned document will automatically appear on your desktop or a supported app of your choice on your Mac.
Method #4: Using the Adobe Scan app
If you’re not satisfied by the solutions available to you through Apple, you can switch your scanning duties to the Adobe Scan app on your iPhone. You can download the Adobe Scan app from the App Store.
Once you have installed the app, open it, and sign in or register to use Adobe’s service.
You will be taken to the app’s home screen. Here, tap on the camera icon at the bottom right to go to the scanning screen.
Inside the scanner screen, you will notice that the Document format has already been selected since that’s what you need to scan. Besides documents, you will also be able to scan business cards, forms, and whiteboards.
To start the scanning process, tap on the shutter button at the bottom or wait for the app to directly scan the page for you.
When a page has been scanned, you can make quick edits to it by aligning all corners. Once that is done, tap on the ‘Continue’ button at the bottom right.
After capturing the page, you can check its preview by tapping on the thumbnail at the bottom right.
You can make necessary changes to the scanned document by using any of the functions from the bottom tools bar like Crop, Rotate, Color, Cleanup, Resize, and more.
For scanning additional pages of the document, tap on the ‘Add page’ tab from the bottom, and select the ‘Take another photo’ option.
You can now hover the camera over the page that needs to be scanned for the app to scan automatically or tap the shutter button on the screen. Repeat these steps for any number of pages you have to scan under the same document.
To save the scanned documents, tap on the preview thumbnail at the bottom right, rename the document to your preferred name, and then tap on the ‘Save PDF’.
The saved document will appear inside the Adobe Scan home screen.
With these methods, you can easily scan documents with ease on your iPhone.
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