How to scan a document with your phone: a clean PDF in five minutes

Your files are never uploaded to a server. Everything runs on your device.

Published November 3, 2026

A phone camera is good enough to replace a scanner for forms, receipts, certificates and pages of a book. What separates a poor scan from a good one is rarely the camera. It is the light, the angle and what you do with the photo afterwards.

Prepare the page and the light

Flatten the page and remove staples or folds if you can. Put it on a dark, plain surface so the edges stand out. Use daylight or a lamp from the side, so the phone does not cast a shadow over the paper, and wipe the lens before you start.

Frame the shot

Hold the phone straight above the page, parallel to the paper. Tilting makes the near edge look larger and distorts the text. Fill the frame with the page but keep all four corners visible, and avoid digital zoom, which lowers the detail.

Straighten the page and pick a mode

In Document scanner, drag the four dots to the corners of the page, or press Find edges. Then choose the result. Black and white is best for text documents because it gives crisp letters and a small file. A softer grey keeps more detail in faint print. Colour is the right choice for stamps, photos and signatures.

Several pages, one file

Add the pages in order and look at each preview once before you download the PDF. If you already have other files that belong to the same set, join them with Merge PDF, and add page numbers with Page numbers so the pages are easy to refer to.

Keep the file size reasonable

Scans can be several megabytes. If a portal or an email limit is in the way, shrink the PDF with Compress PDF. Remember that compression turns pages into images, so keep the original if you need selectable text. Text can be recovered later with OCR: text from PDF and photo.

Keep it private

Passports, receipts and signed forms are sensitive. The scan tool works in your browser and sends the photo to no server. After you have sent the document, delete the photos from your gallery if you do not need them.

Open Scan a document