How to Scan Documents on iPhone (and a Faster Way)

Your landlord wants the signed lease back by email, or HR needs a doctor's note by Friday. You don't need a flatbed scanner for that. Your iPhone has a basic scanner built into the Notes and Files apps. It finds the edges of the page and straightens it, and a multi-page document becomes a single PDF.

For an occasional letter, that does the job. Once you scan more often, though, it gets tedious fast, because the iPhone leaves the rest to you: naming every file and putting it in the right place. Here's how the built-in scanner works and where it falls short. At the end, you'll see how QuickScan takes care of all that for you.

Scan with the Notes app

This is the way most people know. The scan ends up in a note.

Open Notes and start a new note. An existing one works just as well.
Tap the paperclip, then Scan Documents. On older versions of iOS, there's a camera icon in that spot.
Hold your iPhone over the page. In Auto mode, it takes the shot by itself as soon as it recognizes the page. Otherwise, tap the shutter button or press one of the volume buttons.
If you take the shot yourself, your iPhone then shows the corners it found. Drag them into place if needed and tap Keep Scan.
Scan the next page. Once you have them all, tap the checkmark.

All the pages become one document, and it stays inside the note. That's the catch with Notes. To get a PDF into a folder or the cloud, you open the note, tap the scan, tap the Share button, choose Save to Files and pick a folder. Every single time.

Scan straight into a folder with the Files app

The Files app skips the note and saves the PDF in a folder: on your iPhone, in iCloud Drive, or in another storage service whose app you've installed.

Open Files and tap the More button, the three dots at the top right.
Choose Scan Documents.
Scan your pages as described above, then tap the checkmark.
Pick a folder and tap Save.

That saves a few taps, but you still pick the folder for every scan, and the file keeps the name your iPhone gave it until you change it. So rename it right away. Touch and hold the file, then tap Rename. Next April, "Daycare receipts 2026" will be a lot easier to find.

Sign a scan

A lease renewal, the permission slip for a field trip: a lot of paperwork only needs your signature before it goes back. You can sign it right in Notes without printing anything.

Tap the scan in your note.
Tap the Markup button, the one with the pen tip.
Tap the plus button, then Add Signature. Pick a saved signature or create a new one.
Drag the signature to the right spot, adjust its size and tap Done.

Then you still have to share it as described above. To add a date or check a box on a form, use the pens in the same toolbar, with your finger or, on iPad, with an Apple Pencil.

Got the form as a PDF by email instead? That's covered in How to Sign a Document on iPhone, along with how to make the signature look like your real one.

Getting a clean scan

When a scan comes out gray or crooked, it's usually one of these things, whichever app you use:

Edge detection has a hard time with white paper on a light-colored table. Put the page on something dark, and it usually finds the edges on the first try.
If you lean right over the page, your own shadow falls on it. Scan by a window instead, with daylight coming from the side.
On glossy paper and photos, the flash leaves a bright spot. If there's enough light, turn it off in the scanner.
Your iPhone straightens pages shot at an angle, but the far end of the page gets blurrier. Try to hold it level above the sheet.
Grayscale or black and white is fine for letters and forms, and the PDF gets smaller too. You need color for stamps, a signature in blue ink or colorful forms.
Receipts love to curl up. A few minutes under a heavy book helps. And scan the ones you need to keep sooner rather than later, because thermal paper fades.

If all you need from a letter is an account number or a phone number, you don't have to scan it at all. Point the camera at it, and your iPhone recognizes the text so you can select and copy it. Apple calls this Live Text.

Only have a photo of the document? How to turn it into a proper PDF is explained in How to Make a PDF on iPhone.

What about iPad and Mac?

On iPad, everything works the same way, in Notes and in Files, and QuickScan runs there too. Signing is even nicer with an Apple Pencil.

With Continuity Camera, your Mac can use your iPhone's scanner too. In Pages, Mail or Notes, for example, right-click (or Control-click) where the scan should go and choose Scan Documents. Sometimes it's under Insert from iPhone or iPad. The scanner then opens on your iPhone. Scan as usual, tap Save, and the PDF appears on your Mac. It also works in the Finder and some other Apple apps. Both devices have to be signed in with the same Apple Account, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on.

Faster with QuickScan

If you scan every week, those extra taps add up, and getting rid of them is exactly what QuickScan is for. Compare the two.

In the Files app, you tap the three dots, then Scan Documents, scan, tap the checkmark, pick a folder and tap Save. Then you touch and hold the file, tap Rename and type a name.

With QuickScan, you tap a widget on your Home Screen, scan and tap Save. That's it. The PDF already has a proper name and searchable text, and it's in the right folder.

The trick is Export Favorites. Each one pairs a destination with your settings for the file name (say, the date plus a title), color or black and white, and text recognition. Make one for work receipts that go to the office Dropbox and another for household bills in the family's iCloud Drive, then give each one its own widget on the Home Screen or Lock Screen. If you'd rather start from Control Center or the Action button, turn on Automatic Export, and every new scan goes to the Export Favorite you picked.

QuickScan exports to iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint, Nextcloud, WebDAV, a NAS or SMB share, email and Paperless-ngx, among others. With an Export Group, one scan even goes to several places at once.

The recognized text is embedded in the PDF, so you can select and copy it, and your computer, your cloud storage or Paperless-ngx can search it. Text recognition runs on the iPhone itself, without an internet connection. QuickScan can also turn tables into Excel or CSV files, protect a PDF with a password, keep your signatures behind Face ID and lock the whole app.

For personal use, QuickScan is free. There are no ads and no subscription, and you don't need an account. The App Store listing says "Data Not Collected," and it means exactly that. Your scans stay on your iPhone until you send them somewhere yourself.

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Sources: Apple Support, How to scan documents on your iPhone or iPad and Continuity Camera (checked November 2026).

How to Scan Documents on iPhone