Apple’s smartphone includes a document scanner that allows you to quickly create PDFs from images taken with the camera. Mac users also have access to an option to import scans directly into Preview
For a couple of generations now, iPhones and iPads have natively included a feature for scanning documents and images via the camera. It’s a somewhat hidden feature and often overlooked by many users, as evidenced by the success paid scanning apps (like Genius Scan or the great Scanner Pro) continue to reap on the App Store. The iPhone scanner does not activate with a dedicated system app, but is accessed via Notes.
How to scan with your iPhone
To activate the document scanner the first thing to do is to open the Notes app and create a new note. From here we tap on the “+” sign at the bottom and from the modal menu that opens we choose “Scan document”. This will open the camera, with a custom options panel for scan mode.
To get the best scan result we place the document on a background of a color that offers the best possible contrast. If we are acquiring the scan of a sheet of paper, for example, let’s place it on a wooden surface.
The iPhone scanning interface offers various options. If iPhone is unable to automatically recognize the edges of the document (the area highlighted in yellow), disable automatic recognition by tapping on “Auto” at the top right. Once a photo has been taken by hand, we can then manually select the scan perimeter. If, on the other hand, we need a little more light, we tap on the flash logo and then on “Activate” to turn it on when shooting. We also have various filters available, in order to acquire the image with a higher contrast or directly in black and white.
Once the first photo has been acquired, other images can be acquired, which will then be cataloged together as part of a single scan. In this way, even documents consisting of several pages can be scanned in a single solution.
Once the operation is finished we can tap on Save at the bottom right, where a number in brackets will indicate the number of pages scanned.
Export the scan to PDF
Once our scan has been saved, we will find it automatically inserted in a note. A tip to keep track of documents saved in this way: by creating a folder within the notes app (in the app’s main menu) dedicated to scans, it will be possible to keep track of them more easily. Let’s just remember to add only one scan per note, and always create a new note when we scan a new document.
By tapping on the scan inserted in the note, a document navigation interface will open. From here you can export it in various formats simply with a tap on the share icon at the top right. If we want to extract a PDF with our scan, just select “Create PDF”: a few seconds and the file will be displayed directly. With a tap on the share button, this time at the bottom left, you can then save the document on your phone, send it to a Mac with AirDrop or send it by email or send it via Messages, Whatsapp , Telegram.
The shortcut on Mac
Those with a Mac can also follow another shortcut to acquire images directly from the computer via the iPhone. You can do it with Preview, the integrated macOS application for viewing and editing images and PDFs.
Just click at the top of the Preview File menu and then select “Import from iPhone” and then “Scan documents” (in the same way you can also directly acquire a normal photo).
On the iPhone connected to the Mac, the same acquisition interface will open directly, which can be accessed via Notes and from the device we can proceed to photograph the documents we want to acquire. Once the operation is completed, a tap on the Save item will no longer save the scan on the iPhone, but will make it appear directly in a Preview window on the Mac. From here it will then be possible to continue editing the document, adding a signature, a comment text or shapes, then save and possibly export the file directly to PDF or other formats.
iPad and Android smartphones
All functions accessible via the iPhone Note are of course also available on the iPad Note, which can be used in the same way.
Those who have an Android phone, on the other hand, can check the camera options: there is often a Document Scan mode that works in a similar way to that of the iPhone. On Huawei devices, for example, the document capture function via the camera app is powered by the same artificial intelligence that helps improve images. Alternatively, there is always the option to download a third-party app from the Google Play Store. The aforementioned Genius Scan is also available for example for Android, but there are also Clear Scan or Adobe Scan , which is free and also integrates an OCR function for text recognition.
