As a writer who works on a smattering of contracts, I’ve had to print out, sign, and scan more sheets of dead trees than any reasonable person who wasn’t working in an office before Y2K.
On top of that, I’ve had projects where I’m deep in an archive, scanning tens of thousands of pages of old books, brochures, pamphlets, letters, and logbooks; the kind of stuff their owners wouldn’t want sandwiched underneath the lid of a scanner.
Papers from the early 20th century, let alone the 19th century, get awfully brittle.
replacements for the king
Microsoft Lens (iOS, Android) has been my tool of choice for the past five years anytime I’ve needed to scan a document into a PDF, Word, or Excel file. It was a blessed change from the standalone scanners that I’d been using. You know, the big physical ones that look like little Xerox copiers.
But on September 15, 2025, Microsoft is retiring it. You’ll no longer be able to download it. That means you and I need to find a new scanning app. It’d help if it were free, too, and not a piece of crap, sketch-bag malware.
Adobe Scan (iOS, Android) is free, but certain features require a subscription at $10 per month or $70 per year. That’s silly money to pay for a scanning app, especially since Microsoft Lens didn’t hide certain features behind a paywall like that. Use the free version, though, as long as you don’t need to combine files or export PDFs to other formats.
Google Drive is one option I’ve used heavily for document scanning when I’ve needed to do so seamlessly and in the moment with several collaborators, where I didn’t have time to fiddle with sharing settings. It’s been a bit slower than Lens in my experience, but at least it’s not going extinct. And oh yeah, it’s all free.
Evernote Scannable is a solid free option, although it’s iOS only. If it seems like the pickings are slim for free scanning apps from trusted names after Microsoft Lens’ disappearance, that’s because the pickings are slim. Still, these are the best options I’ve found in a field full of money grubbers and malware masquerading as legitimate apps.
As for Lens, it won’t be for much longer. As long as you download it from the Apple Play Store or Google Play Store before September 15, or if you already have it downloaded, you’ll be able to keep scanning documents until December 15, 2025, when Microsoft pulls the plug on that feature, too.
You can rush off to download it if you want, but you’re going to have to find a replacement soon, anyway. You may as well go straight to one of these replacements instead.
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