Scan Documents With Your iPhone

You have several documents that you need to scan in but no longer have that huge clunky flatbed scanner that was a nuisance to keep around for the few occasions you needed it. Or you just want to take a picture of a recipe so that you have it on your phone for later, but need it to be legible. Or you want to take a snapshot of that business card so that you can check it out again at your convenience.

Scanning Using the Notes App on iOS

Well few versions of iOS ago Apple added a very useful feature to the notes app, which allows you to scan documents in using the camera on your device. It correctly identifies the edges of the document and corrects for perspective and colour to create a pdf version of the document you are scanning. This pdf can then be shared, annotated, or stored elsewhere.

How to Scan a Document

To create a scan open the notes app and create a new note. Next click the + symbol in the grey circle which will reveal the Actions bar. Select the camera icon and choose Scan Documents from the menu that appears.

Place the document to be scanned in the path of the camera and a yellow box will appear around the edges. This is displaying the apps ability to detect the edges of the document. Press the shutter button or wait and the app will automatically convert the photograph in to a corrected pdf document. You can make multiple scans at a time, just place the next document to scan into the path of the camera.

When you are done click save and all of the documents that you have scanned will be placed inside a new note. You can leave it here if you wish but if you click the share button (the square with an arrow pointing up.) then you are able to send it to multiple places using the share sheet, such as Airdrop, message, send to Books etc.