How does scanning work on iphone

These affiliate partnerships do not influence our editorial content. Apple wants you to scan documents with your iPhone and has given us all very good tools for doing so — but there are more and, sometimes much better alternatives. You do already have a document scanner in your iPhone with its regular camera, and you always have had.

So even without using Apple's newer tools and features, there is nothing to stop you just taking a normal photograph of a page. There's nothing to stop you doing it on an iPad either, except that it's substantially harder to hold one of those steady over a document and without casting a shadow. When you do this, the document scans go into your Photos camera roll where you can see them on your iPhone, iPad or back on your Mac.

Then you can later select any number of images from your iPhone's Photo app and send them to Preview as one single PDF. It's been turned from an image of text, into something you can search, select, and copy. Similarly, you can send the photos to just about any iOS app. Apple Notes, for instance, will take them all in one go too — but it will create a note that has each image stored separately. That's really meant for adding an occasional photo to some other document, though: you can still only select a single image at a time.

We'd recommend it for single items like one page or one receipt at a time. It's good for making a fast scan of something you'll only want to glance at later, not work from or share with anybody. You can also do a huge amount with photographs using Shortcuts. It took us about four minutes from having the idea to a working and tested Shortcut that selects images, makes them into a single PDF and sends them via email. It's also one of the easiest, shortest Shortcuts you can make. We've previously also done more elaborate ones for sending receipt scans to particular Evernote notebooks, or shared Dropbox folders.

What this does, though, is turn the various stages of scanning and saving into convenient one-tap Shortcut workflows. It doesn't actually improve the quality of a scan, and it doesn't do anything for coping with the problems you'll find scanning whole documents. So, adding Shortcuts into the mix is handier than just using the regular Photos app — but not by a great deal.

As a result, we recommend it for no more than four pages of documents at a time which will still suit most casual document scanning needs. This is where Apple's preferred option comes in.

You have a document that's longer than few pages, but it isn't hundreds or thousands of volumes long. Use Continuity Camera. This is the feature built into Macs where a scan you take on your iPhone is immediately relayed to that computer. It can be automatically saved into an Apple Note, into Pages, or into any folder on the Mac. What's more, that Continuity Camera will do its best to figure out what's your document, and what's your desk around it.

The scanning app will search for the edges of your page, and will straighten out the scan, too. How to scan documents on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch You can use the Notes app to scan documents and add signatures on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Scan a document Open Notes and select a note or create a new one.

Tap the Camera button , then tap Scan Documents. Place your document in view of the camera. If your device is in Auto mode, your document will automatically scan. Press the capture button to "scan" the document and save it to your phone. After saving the image file, you can use it just as you would a normal scanned document.

Open it in your Mail app and attach it to an email, or send it in a text message. There — in those few steps, you've easily scanned a QR code on your iPhone or iPad. To access the scanner, open the app, click on the plus button at the top of the "Passes" section, then tap on Scan Code to Add a Pass. From here, you can scan QR codes for coupons, boarding passes, tickets, and loyalty cards, but only for the specific things that Wallet considers "passes.

If you don't fancy either of the above two methods, you can also head to the App Store where you'll find a wide selection of free QR code reading applications.

John joined TechRadar a decade ago as Staff Writer for Phones, and over the years has built up a vast knowledge of the tech industry.