
Mopria Scan lets you initiate a scan remotely and then have the results appear right on your Android phone.
JR Raphael / Foundry
Scanning with Android via your phone’s camera
Maybe you don’t have or want to fuss with a standalone scanner and would rather just capture something using the camera that’s already in your purse, pocket, or pantaloons anyway. Believe it or not, you can actually get reasonably high-quality scans that way nowadays, and most people won’t even know the difference.
The Google Play Store houses a variety of apps that are up to the task, but the most powerful and versatile option for documents and other text-centric scanning is the free Google Drive app that’s probably already on your phone. Just open it up and tap the camera icon in its lower-right corner — or, if you want to save yourself a step, press and hold the Drive icon on your home screen or in your app drawer and then tap (or even save!) the “Scan” shortcut that pops up in that area — and, if necessary, look for the prompt to try out the new and improved Drive scanner.
This recently released version of the Drive scanner will automatically identify any documents in your camera’s view and almost instantly find their edges and capture a clean, tidy scan of them for you. It’ll keep looking for more documents or pages without any extra actions, too, which makes it delightfully easy to handle a slew of scans without wanting to gouge your eyes out.
