How to scan a document with your phone for free on iPhone and Android

What a scanner app does that the camera does not

Take an ordinary photo of a contract on a desk and you get a trapezium of paper, grey in one corner from your own shadow, with the desk, a pen and your thumb around it. A scanner app does four things to that photo. It finds the four corners of the page, straightens the page so the edges are square, removes the shading so the paper turns white, and saves the pages as one PDF instead of a pile of photos.

Every phone you are likely to own can already do this for free. iPhones have it in Notes and Files, Android phones get it with the Google Drive app, and a browser page can do it on both. They differ in where the PDF ends up, whether you can copy the text out of it, and how they cope with a bad shadow. This guide goes through each one with the button names you will see.

iPhone: Notes and Files

Apple’s support page “How to scan documents on your iPhone or iPad” gives the steps for both apps.

In Notes: open a note, tap the Attachment button, then Scan Documents. Point the camera at the page. In Auto mode the page is captured by itself; otherwise tap the Shutter button or press a volume button. Drag the corners to fit the page, tap Keep Scan, add more pages the same way and tap Done. The scan stays inside the note.

In Files: tap the More button (the three dots), then Scan Documents, and follow the same capture steps. When you tap Done, Files asks where to keep the scan; choose a location and tap Save. We checked that Scan Documents still sits in that menu on iOS 27.

Apple adds that from iOS 26 you can choose the flash or an image filter while scanning. Both apps need no account and keep the file on the phone unless that note or folder is in iCloud. Apple’s page says nothing about copying text out of the scan, so do not count on it.

Android: Google Drive

Google’s help page “Scan documents with Google Drive” describes the Android app:

1. Open the Drive app and tap Camera at the bottom right.
2. Point it at the page. A blue line shows the area that will be kept. Take the photo, or switch between Manual and Auto capture.
3. Adjust the page with Crop & Rotate, Filter (colours or greyscale) and Clean (to erase stains or a finger), and use Add, Retake or Delete for the pages.
4. Tap Done, give the file a name, choose .pdf or .jpg, pick a folder under Location if you want, and tap Save.

Google describes the result as a searchable PDF. It is saved into a folder of your Google Drive, which means onto Google’s servers under your Google account. For a shopping receipt that hardly matters. For a medical report, or a contract you were asked to keep private, you may want the file to stay on the phone.

In the browser on any phone: Scan to PDF

Scan to PDF on this site does the same job in Safari or Chrome, on iPhone, iPad and Android, with nothing installed and no account. The camera picture, the page finding, the clean-up and the reading of the text all run on the phone, and nothing is uploaded.

1. Open Scan to PDF and tap Scan with the camera. Your browser asks once for permission to use the camera.
2. Hold the phone over the page so the page fills most of the frame. An outline appears on the page when it is found. Tap the round button to take the photo, or switch on Auto first: the photo is then taken by itself once the page has been held still for under a second. Auto takes only a sheet of paper, so a laptop screen in view does not set it off.
3. On Drag the corners to the edges of the page, check that each corner sits on the paper, drag any that do not, and tap Next.
4. Pick a clean-up filter: Original, Auto, Grey, B&W or Board. Tap Add a page for the next page, and Done when the last one is in.
5. Under Save as PDF, set the File name and the Page size (A4, Letter or Fit photo). Searchable text is on, so the PDF carries the words as text. Smaller file lowers the resolution for email and upload limits.
6. Tap Save PDF, or Share to send it straight to Mail, WhatsApp or Files.

No shadow, no grey paper

Most bad scans are bad light. A ceiling lamp behind you puts the shadow of your head and the phone on the page, and a dim room turns white paper grey. The filters can rescue a lot of that. Auto treats the page as paper: it works out how the light falls across the sheet and divides it out, so the paper turns white and the ink stays dark, with the colours of a stamp or a signature kept. B&W goes further, to crisp black text on white, stored at one bit per pixel, which gives the smallest file and suits typed letters and forms. Board is for whiteboards: a white background with the marker colours brightened. Original keeps the flattened photo as it was taken, for a page whose colours matter.

The filters work better when the photo is good to begin with:

• Stand with a window to one side of you, not behind you, so your shadow falls away from the page.
• Lay the page flat on a surface darker than the paper. The edges are easier to find, and the corners land where they should.
• Hold the phone flat above the page rather than at an angle. The page is straightened either way, but at a steep angle the far edge has fewer pixels and comes out softer.
• Turn the flash off for glossy paper, where it leaves a white spot.

Scan on the phone, keep the PDF on the computer

If the PDF is going to be printed, signed or attached from a computer, open Scan to PDF on the computer instead. It shows a QR code; scan it with the phone’s camera, and every page you take on the phone appears on the computer as you go, ready to check and save there. The two devices connect directly when the network allows it. When it does not, the pages pass through a relay in encrypted form, with a key that is in the QR code and never reaches the relay. The guide to why your files never leave your device explains how you can check that yourself.

Which one to use

What differs	Notes or Files (iPhone)	Google Drive (Android)	Scan to PDF (browser)
Account needed	No	A Google account	No
Where the PDF goes	In the note, or the Files folder you choose	A folder in your Google Drive	Your phone, or your computer through the QR link
Text you can copy	Apple’s page does not say	Google calls it a searchable PDF	Yes, laid over the page; English, Arabic and Urdu
Phones	iPhone and iPad	Android	iPhone, iPad, Android and computers

All three are free and all three will give you a usable PDF of a clean page in good light. Pick by where you want the file to live, and by whether you need to copy the text out of it later.