How many times have you had to convert a paper document to digital but you don't have a scanner on hand? You may not know it, but the portable scanner for your documents is already present in your pocket or bag!
In this guide, I will show you the best text scanning apps that you can try for free on your smartphone or tablet in any usage scenario.
Many apps for portable devices (whether Android or iOS, it doesn't matter) allow you to scan the text photographed with camera Go back and convert it back to text, just like a real OCR (Optical Character Recognizer).
scanning application
Scanbot
Among the best apps you can try, Scanbot, an app, certainly stands out. free capable of turning your rear camera into a real one scanner, ready to scan any document.
How the app works is simple: point the rear camera at the sheet of paper you're going to scan (making sure it fits completely within the edges of the screen) and take a photo.
Once the photo is taken, you can create the digital document in PDF, editing with annotations and underlining where necessary.
In addition to paper documents, it is also capable of scanning QR codes to retrieve codes you find on magazines and packages.
You can download this application for Android and iOS for free from the following links.
DOWNLOAD | Scanbot (Android)
DOWNLOAD | Escanbot (iOS)
office lens
Microsoft has launched Office Lens for all portable devices, great for capturing text and converting it directly into a document Word or in (PDF).
In addition to storing paper documents, it is perfect for storing additional receipts, bills, and invoices. With a simple photo you can acquire all the data present on a blackboard, to be able to have all the teacher's notes in paper format. .
Using the application is not difficult: point the rear camera at the document to be scanned and the application will do the rest, also offering valid tools to crop and optimize the scanned text.
You can download this application for Android and iOS for free from the following links.
DOWNLOAD | Office Lens (Android)
DOWNLOAD | Office Lens (iOS)
CamScanner
Among the applications I would also like to highlight CamScanner.
With this application, scanning a document will be very easy! All scanned documents are recognized and converted to the format. (PDF), so that they can be easily read by both other mobile devices and PCs.
Excellent are the auto acquisition features (useful if you have multiple documents to scan) and auto crop mode, for easy character recognition and generation of the final document.
You can download this application for Android and iOS for free from the following links.
DOWNLOAD | CamScanner (Android)
DOWNLOAD | Camera scanner (iOS)
Other recommended applications
If you have used any of the applications that I recommended previously, you will surely have found the application to read text documents that best suits your needs.
In case you are looking for valid alternatives, I have collected all the other apps to scan text on Android and iOS in the list below.
- My scans (Android and iOS)
- Scan Genius (Android and iOS)
- Fast PDF Scanner (Android Only)
- Scannable Evernote (iOS only)
- Small scanner (Android and iOS)
- Simple Scan (Android only)
- Document scanning (iOS only)
As you can see, there is no shortage of alternatives, since they are all free applications, you can very well try them and use the one that is most satisfactory to you.
Applications to scan text with Android or iOS