Most articles about scanning documents with your phone want you to install yet another scanner app. You don't need one: both iPhone and Android have a genuinely good document scanner built in — with edge detection, perspective correction, and multi-page support. It's just hidden in places you'd never think to look. Here's where, plus how to clean up the result.
On iPhone or iPad: the Notes app
- Open Notes and create (or open) a note.
- Tap the paperclip / attach icon and choose Scan Documents.
- Hold the phone over the page — it detects the edges and captures automatically. Keep going for multi-page documents, then tap Save.
- Tap the scan, then the share icon → Save to Files. That saved file is a PDF.
The Files app can also scan directly: tap the ⋯ menu → Scan Documents — saves straight to a PDF without going through Notes.
On Android: Google Drive
- Open the Google Drive app and tap the + New button.
- Choose Scan. Capture each page — Drive crops and enhances automatically, and you can add pages before finishing.
- Tap Save — the result is a PDF in your Drive, ready to share or download.
Many Samsung and Pixel phones also offer scanning right in the camera app — point at a document and look for the "scan" suggestion.
Ready to try it? It's free — no sign-up, no credit card, no watermark, and your file never leaves your device.
Compress your scan now →The cleanup step everyone skips
- Scans are huge. A few phone-scanned pages easily exceed email and portal limits. Run the PDF through the free compressor — scans regularly shrink 60–90%. Hitting a strict cap? See the compress-to-200KB guide.
- Sideways or duplicate pages? Fix them in the Organize tool — rotate, reorder, or delete pages in seconds.
- Scanned in several sessions? Merge the PDFs into one document.
- Only have photos of the pages? Convert them with Images to PDF instead of re-scanning.
Frequently asked
Do I need a scanner app at all?
For ordinary documents, no — the built-in scanners handle edge detection and multi-page capture well. Dedicated apps only earn their install for OCR (making scanned text searchable) or high-volume batch scanning.
Why is my scanned PDF so large?
Phone scanners save each page as a high-resolution photo — far more detail than a reader needs. Compressing re-encodes those images at sensible sizes with no visible difference at reading size.
Can I sign a scanned document?
Yes — drop the scanned PDF into the free Sign PDF tool, draw your signature with your finger, place it, and download. All in the browser, nothing installed.