A
Allyson Kazmucha
The absolute best iPhone apps to accurately scan your pages, store your documents, and let you share them more conveniently than ever!
Looking for the best iPhone apps to help you scan and manage documents? These days you can create, edit, and share documents on the go without stopping at the office. You can even print them out with AirPrint. The App Store plays host to several document scanner apps that can help you file receipts, track bills, and get important documents to clients when you need to. But which document scanner apps are the absolute best?
Scanner Pro
Scanner Pro by Readdle has a great interface and is one of the easiest scanner apps to just pick up and use. Scanner Pro also supports scanning of both documents and images as well as the ability to store them in PDF format or jpeg formats. Scanning is fast and accurate and cleans text up extremely well. You can upload images and documents and scan them directly to Dropbox, Evernote, and Google Docs. You can also sort documents into custom folders to keep them organized. Readdle also has several other document and PDF management apps that play nicely with Scanner Pro and create a completely virtual office environment.
If you're looking for a scanner app that's well supported and has many other companion apps to go with it, you want Scanner Pro.
- $6.99 - Download Now
InstaPDF has not only an iPhone app but a Mac app that magically collects all the PDFs you scan to it from the iPhone app. Not only is the scan quality great, InstaPDF is user friendly and has one of the nicest designs of all the scanner apps we've looked at. If you're on WiFi, upload is pretty much instantaneous. This is convenient for times when you need to sign documents and have them instantly available on your computer, or whenever you're in the office and just want all your documents on your Mac instantly for safe keeping.
If you need to wirelessly beam documents from iPhone to Mac on a regular basis, get InstaPDF.
- Free - Download Now
TinyScan Pro can quickly capture your receipts, documents, or anything else you need to scan as either an image or a PDF. You can quickly toggle between photograph, black and white, or greyscale. Create folders to keep yourself organized and then share your scans in just a few taps. TinyScan Pro currently supports sharing directly to Evernote, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Box. You can also use AirDrop in order to share your scans to other iPhones and iPads. Batch mode can also let you scan multiple pages into a single PDF.
For a great scanner app that's easy to use and consistently produces great quality scans, check out TinyScan Pro.
- $4.99 - Download Now
ShareScan Pro not only creates great quality scans, but can also use OCR (optical character recognition) to actually extract text from scans. Currently SharpScan Pro supports over 50 languages that it can extract and recognize text from. This feature is extremely useful for times when you need to type out large blocks of text. Instead, just snap a photo with SharpScan Pro and let it do the heavy lifting for you. SharpScan Pro also features many other features to help you achieve the best scans possible including image stabilization, smart crop, and more.
If you're looking for a scanner app with OCR capabilities and lots of layering and editing options, look no further than SharpScan Pro.
- $4.99 - Download Now
PaperBox is a unique kind of scanner app that focuses on helping you organizing bills, receipts, and other paper documents. Once you link PaperBox with your Dropbox you can start scanning in documents. Mark bills for later and PaperBox can notify you when an upcoming bill is due. You can also trash items once you're done with them too. PaperBox also supports OCR and can extract text from any document in order to create searchable text. You can also organize your PaperBox by adding buckets such as loans, bills, and anything else you'd like. Finally, add tags to add even more organization.
If you're looking to go paper free and need a way to organize and track bills and receipts digitally, PaperBox is definitely worth a look.
- Free - Download Now
These are the document scanning apps I've found to be the most worthy of your attention. But as always, I want to know what you're using and why you chose it over the many other options available in the App Store. Be sure to let me know in the comments!
Note: Originally published August, 2013. Updated May 2014.
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