You must have come across a situation where you’ve had to scan a document. Although there are many apps to do the do that, they might not be the best option for you. This is because most of them are either full of ads at every step or the downloadable document is hidden behind a paywall. And these things can be frustrating, especially when you need to scan a document urgently. Therefore, we tested free-to-use document scanners across Android and iOS.

Comparing Best Document Scanners

The best part about these scanners is that they are built-in. That’s why you won’t need to download any additional application on your device. Let’s compare them below.

Google Drive

Every Android smartphone comes with pre-installed Google apps, and Google Drive is one of them. Among many features that it offers, the inbuilt document scanner is underrated. To access it, simply open the Google Drive app and tap on the camera icon above the plus icon in the bottom-right corner.

Here, you can either upload images from your device or capture them instantly. For capturing, you get both Auto and Manual capture modes. Often, when you try to align the document for scanning, it gets misaligned when you tap the shutter button. So, in such instances, the Auto capture mode is convenient. Since it captures the document image just as it aligns, you don’t have to press the shutter button.

Once the document is scanned, you get some options to edit it. You can apply filters, crop or rotate the page, and clean up, too. You can also add more pages to the same document or rearrange the scanned pages. After editing, you can name it, save it as a PDF or JPEG, and upload it to your drive. To share it, you can either download it or simply share the drive link.

Pros:

• Ease of access to documents as they are saved in your drive. Therefore, you can access them across devices.
• Though OCR is limited, it is still useful. You can search for any scanned document, even if you don’t remember the file name, by just searching for any word in the document’s content.
• When you’re scanning documents from Auto capture and keep the camera on the already scanned page, it prompts you with ‘Page already scanned’. This is impressive as it prevents you from accidentally scanning a single page more than once, especially when you’re scanning a multi-page document.

Cons:

• Limited editing options.
• No advanced export formats

OxygenOS Text Scanner

OnePlus devices operating on OxygenOS have an inbuilt document scanner. This is integrated in the camera app. To access it, simply open the camera app and swipe left till you reach the ‘Text Scanner’ mode. Additionally, you will find this in Oppo devices, as ColorOS is very similar to OxygenOS.

Here, you can capture pages of the document, and it will align them in the appropriate orientation and crop them accordingly. Once you have captured the image, open it in the gallery and tap ‘Scan document’ in the bottom-right corner.

You can apply various filters on this page. Additionally, you can rotate or align your page as you prefer. You will also get clean-up options such as removing shadows, text, or glare. Once you are done editing, just tap the top-left corner to export the document as an image or a PDF.

Pros:

• Uses AI to enhance page quality.
• As expected from OxygenOS, the UI feels minimal and easy to use.

Cons:

• No auto capture feature
• Lack of editing options and features, such as page rearranging.

iPhone Notes

iPhone users can use the Notes app, which has a built-in document scanning feature. To access it, long-press the notes app icon on the home screen and tap ‘Scan documents’. Or you can open the Notes app and find the tool when you open a new Note.

Similar to Google Drive, you will also find the auto-capture feature here, which you can switch to manual if you need. Unlike other options, this allows you to apply filters while capturing the document image.

After capturing it, you can align or crop it, then tap ‘keep scan’. It will get saved as a new note. Furthermore, you can save this to files and share it as either a PDF or a doc file.

Pros:

• Well integrated into iOS
• Edit options such as adding text and annotations.

Cons:

• Export options are limited and not as smooth across devices outside the Apple ecosystem.
• Lack of OCR features

Best Document Scanner App

Every tool has something that gives it an edge over the others.

• For instance, the AI features in the OxygenOS Text scanner are useful when you have to capture document images in complicated lighting conditions.
• Similarly, the ‘Scan document’ tool in the iPhone Notes app will be convenient for someone operating within an Apple ecosystem. Also, as mentioned above, the feature for adding text and annotations can be really useful.
• But if I had to pick one, I think I would go with the Scan document tool in Google Drive. Simply because of the ease of exporting and sharing the documents due to strong cloud storage integration. Also, the other options are limited to specific devices, but this can work for almost everyone’s document-scanning needs.

FAQs

Q. How do I scan documents without installing any apps?

You can simply scan documents without installing any app using the Google Drive ‘Scan’ tool, which comes pre-installed on almost all devices. You can use the text scanner integrated into the camera app on OnePlus or Oppo devices.

Q. How to scan documents on iPhone for free?

You can scan documents on an iPhone for free using the Notes app. Moreover, you can also annotate the documents.

Wrapping Up

Nowadays, everyone has once felt the need for Document scanners since more and more applications and bookings are being done online. Since third-party apps can be a hassle to use, built-in smartphone tools are convenient for users. We compared 3 such options across operating systems. While OxygenOS and iOS offer some interesting features in their document scanners, the Scan tool in Google Drive seems ideal for almost everyone.

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