There’s a full-blown drawing tool, so that you can sign or annotate a screen. You can invite colleagues to comment on your scans, sync your scans across devices, send people a link to download your scan, add notes to a scan. Otherwise, though, this is an elaborate system, full of features that no other app offers. It doesn’t snap the pages automatically, though - you have to tap the shutter button for each capture.

Automated is better.Ĭompare here, for example, the manual, tap-when-you’re-ready apps (like Genius Scan) to the ones that automate the procedure (like Evernote Scannable): And each of those taps is another decision point for you, another pause, another moment of having to think. Some of these apps do a lot, but you have to tap your way through them - and there are lots and lots of taps. Just try figuring out how to add pages to a scan you made yesterday, for example. The more features it has, the more complicated it becomes. Sometimes the differences are minor: For example, you can email scans from any of them, but often only the pro (paid) versions let you save your scans to Dropbox, Google Drive, and so on. Many come in both free and paid versions. There are lots of terrific scanning apps.

Instead, I’ll just share with you my findings: Life is short, so I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow of my incredibly boring journey through Genius Scan, Genius Scan+, Google Drive, Scanner Mini, Scanner Pro, iScanner, iScanner Pro, Scannable, DocScan, DocScan Pro, TurboScan, CamScanner, CamScanner Premium, iScanner, ScanBot, ScanBot Pro, JotNot Pro, and Fast Scanner. Supports annotation (draw on or sign a document).Įxports to all the usual places (Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, etc.).Īutomatically saves each scan to a chosen location (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.).Ĭonverts the picture to actual typed text (OCR). Provides brightness/contrast adjustments. Rapid-fire batch mode (snap one page after another without pausing to process each one). Lets you specify the page size for the result (letter, legal, A4, etc.).

Ready?Īutomatically finds the borders of the page.Īutomatically straightens, rotates, and de-skews the page. (Correct: I have no life.) In the course of that testing, I came up with a master list of 14 features that I think those apps should have - and I discovered that it’s very hard to find one app that offers all of them. I’ve just spent several days testing no fewer than 18 of these scanning apps.

Evernote scannable iphone