How to scan documents with your phone to PDF
To scan documents with your phone, open the PDF Scanner tool in your browser, allow camera access, photograph each page and generate the PDF. If you turn on OCR, the text becomes searchable and copyable. Use natural light, a flat surface and keep the camera parallel to the paper.
A scanner in your pocket: when it makes sense
Signed contracts, receipts, prescriptions, personal documents and notes often exist only on paper. Photographing them with your phone is the fastest way to turn them into a file, with no scanner or installed app. The result is a PDF with one page per photo, ready to send, store or attach to a portal.
How to scan step by step
With the PDF Scanner tool:
- Open the tool in your phone’s browser and allow camera access.
- Photograph each page of the document, one at a time.
- If you like, turn on the option to make the text searchable (OCR).
- Generate the PDF and download the file with all the pages.
How to take photos that make good scans
The quality of the PDF depends on the photo:
- Place the document on a dark, flat surface in natural light.
- Avoid shadows from your hand or phone falling on the paper.
- Frame the whole page and keep the camera parallel to the paper to avoid distortion.
- Prefer originals without folds and make sure the focus is sharp before shooting.
When to turn on OCR
A PDF generated from photos contains images, not text: you cannot search for a word or copy a passage. When you turn on OCR, the tool recognizes the letters and adds an invisible text layer without changing how the pages look. It is worth it for documents you will look up later. To learn more, see the guide to OCR and searchable PDFs.
After scanning: tidy up and shrink
If a page came out of order, use Reorder Pages; if it came out sideways, use Rotate PDF. To send by email or to a portal with a size limit, run the result through Compress PDF.
Caution with personal documents
Scanned documents often contain tax IDs, addresses and other sensitive data. Uploaded files are automatically deleted from the server after about 1 hour, but still avoid scanning on public networks and delete the photos from your phone afterward. Before sharing, hide whatever does not need to be visible with Redact PDF and, if necessary, protect the file with a password.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to install an app?
No. The tool works in your phone or computer browser; just allow camera access when the browser asks.
Do I need to turn on OCR?
It is not required. OCR makes the text searchable and copyable, but it makes processing a bit slower.
The PDF came out too heavy to send. What can I do?
Use Compress PDF after generating the file. For text documents, a quality level of 60% to 75% is usually enough.