Show HN: Open Scanner, an open-source document scanning app for iPhone(github.com)
github.com
Show HN: Open Scanner, an open-source document scanning app for iPhone
https://github.com/pencilresearch/OpenScanner
84 comments
Not sure how this compares to the scanner in the native Files app?
https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/scan-documents-ios-files-ap...
I think the fact this made it to the front page shows how many were unaware of the scanner in the files app. I have multiple times looked into ways to scan on iPhone and have only found the Notes app, which is kinda klunky, and Microsoft Lens.
I agree, but what’s the solution then? Creating a new app doing the same job? Or writing a tutorial to explain how to use the native scanner?
Move it out of the Files app. Nobody uses Files, Apple seemingly doesn't want you to use Files. Clearly not a priority though.
Pressing and holding the Files icon on the iOS home screen allows you to directly access the scanning feature.
Pretty handy! I didn’t know this feature existed, and the scanner app I had been using stopped working a couple months ago and I haven’t been able to find a replacement that I was happy with.
Pretty handy! I didn’t know this feature existed, and the scanner app I had been using stopped working a couple months ago and I haven’t been able to find a replacement that I was happy with.
On the latest iOS update, searching for the Files app also returns a shortcut to the scanner. Weirdly, searching for "scan" or similar doesn't return it... The icon is similar in design to the control centre so you'd think it could be added there, but again, it's unavailable...
You need to type "scan d" for it to work. It's funny how both Windows and iOS manage to struggle with pretty basic search functionality.
> Nobody uses Files
What else would you use? I use it quite often.
What else would you use? I use it quite often.
Same, but to answer your question: Notes app also has scanning.
TIL it’s in the files app. I always use the notes app for this. You can either long-press on notes and tap scan document or go into a random note, scan a document, and export it as pdf from there
I did not check the source code but scanning UI and outcome is exactly the same as native iOS scanner.
In case anybody was wondering, you can also do this in Android via the Google Drive app. Click "New" and then "Scan".
There is a shortcut for the native scan within Files. I usually add to the Home Screen.
I had no clue there was a scanner in the files app.
Thanks so much for crafting and sharing this app. Was just chatting with a friend about scanning via Notes[1], which is a little clunky for quickly and seamlessly sharing a scan.
A few feature suggestions:
* Allow setting default color mode (having to switch manually to B&W every time adds another step)
* Allow setting setting type (PDF, JPG, TXT) and size (Original, Medium, Small) in Sharing Options à la Scanner Pro[2]
* Allow sharing immediately after scanning rather than first having to tap Save then opening the image again
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/108963
[2] https://readdle.com/scannerpro
A few feature suggestions:
* Allow setting default color mode (having to switch manually to B&W every time adds another step)
* Allow setting setting type (PDF, JPG, TXT) and size (Original, Medium, Small) in Sharing Options à la Scanner Pro[2]
* Allow sharing immediately after scanning rather than first having to tap Save then opening the image again
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/108963
[2] https://readdle.com/scannerpro
You can actually directly scan in the Files app from the triple dots menu in the upper right corner, this will allow you to directly scan as a PDF file.
I love Apple, but this is so Apple: hidden powerful functionality you'll only know about through word of mouth or intentional exploration in the UI.
It’s also documented in the iPhone User Guide.
You can get it through Books or on the web:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iphf2746307f/18...
You can get it through Books or on the web:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iphf2746307f/18...
No one reads the manuals these days.
Apart from me apparently.
Apart from me apparently.
I work mainly with undocumented stuff. That taught me to appreciate when there is manuals and documentation for anything and I read them. I don't watch YouTube videos, I read the manual. Of course until I can't figure it out and then still look into YouTube anyway.
Exploring the UI is a perfectly valid method of discovering functionality. What’s the alternative? The phone interrupting you every 2 steps saying hey by the way, you can also do this and this from here?
Valid, yes. But this should never be the sole method of discovery.
Good UX provides clues to discovering additional functionality without intruding on the user.
What’s the alternative? That’s a question for a UX team - something Apple can certainly afford.
Good UX provides clues to discovering additional functionality without intruding on the user.
What’s the alternative? That’s a question for a UX team - something Apple can certainly afford.
Clicking on a kebab and getting a clearly-labeled “scan document” option seems like an eminently followable clue. It’s not like it’s a minuscule inscrutable icon three levels down.
> Good UX provides clues to discovering additional functionality without intruding on the user.
This does that. It's behind a button that means "click this for a bunch of stuff you can do here"
This does that. It's behind a button that means "click this for a bunch of stuff you can do here"
Now, I’ll probably ask Siri. “How can I scan a document with native iOS functionality?” Hopefully I get the right answer back from the LLM!
(Admittedly, I have never read the manual for any iPhone I’ve owned; mea culpa)
(Admittedly, I have never read the manual for any iPhone I’ve owned; mea culpa)
It also shows up as a shortcut in spotlight if you search for “Scan Document”
Same with number-range call blocking. Gotta pay $4 but it saves you from scammers and other serial callers
...or the manual.
And you can scan to any cloud provider that integrates with Files that way. Dropbox etc
Mind blown. Thanks for telling me about this gem.
And you can use the Shortcuts app to create a home screen shortcut for it.
You can long-press the Files icon and access it from the iOS context menu too!
With an iPad, just open Camera. If it sees a piece of paper, you’ll get a yellow Scan Document button without doing anything.
Also worth noting is that if you have a Mac, you can do the same from its Finder and a right click menu.
Came here to say the same. I wonder how this app compares. One perk this app provides is you have a button to press from your home screen. With the native feature, you could set up an Apple shortcut to start scanning a document and create a button on your home screen.
Apart from being clunky Apple's Notes app has some just... odd limitations. E.g. you can only scan 24 pages in a note, because reasons?
Congrats on the release. Open Scanner looks like a good alternative to the paid TurboScan (it's what I've been using for over 5+ years):
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/turboscan-pro-pdf-scanner/id34...
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/turboscan-pro-pdf-scanner/id34...
Also have been using this for years (even knowing that there's this feature built-in in the Notes app).
Looks incredible! As someone preparing a large iPhone-based scanning project, this couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m a longtime CamScanner user, but will happily move to something open source if it delivers on its promises. Will try it out asap!
Re:the common “why not just use the native functionality” questions, I think the simple answer is scale. If I want to scan a random receipt I’d use Apple, but as we all know well, Apple rarely caters to power users — someone scanning multiple times a day or for hours at a time will almost definitely be better served by a dedicated app.
Side note: these (two!!) devs are killing it. Great communication (their privacy policy is top-notch), great styling, and they have a whole roster of neat apps lined up, including an Apple Vision release. Thanks for putting them on my radar, OP! https://pencilresearch.com/
Re:the common “why not just use the native functionality” questions, I think the simple answer is scale. If I want to scan a random receipt I’d use Apple, but as we all know well, Apple rarely caters to power users — someone scanning multiple times a day or for hours at a time will almost definitely be better served by a dedicated app.
Side note: these (two!!) devs are killing it. Great communication (their privacy policy is top-notch), great styling, and they have a whole roster of neat apps lined up, including an Apple Vision release. Thanks for putting them on my radar, OP! https://pencilresearch.com/
I am partial to QuickScan[1] as it is free and has no ads. It does not seem to be open source though.
[1] https://www.quickscanapp.com/
[1] https://www.quickscanapp.com/
QuickScan looks great and has loads of features, but it might be more accurately described as "nagware" since a donation request is shown on every export until a donation is made (after which point it can be disabled via Settings > Other settings > "Do not show donation request"). Nothing wrong with that; if I were a user I'd certainly donate, just wanted to let other potential users know.
It's funny how we tolerate Winrar doing that but on the phone it seems more annoying.
Who's "we"? It seems it's only Windows users. Linux users don't use Winrar, and I don't know offhand of any nagware like this in Linux-land.
Sublime does it, at least with Merge.
It’s weird to think Linux programs would somehow be different from Windows in this regard. Why would a program running in Linux are more altruistic (for lack of a better term) than one running in Windows?
It’s weird to think Linux programs would somehow be different from Windows in this regard. Why would a program running in Linux are more altruistic (for lack of a better term) than one running in Windows?
>Why would a program running in Linux are more altruistic (for lack of a better term) than one running in Windows?
It's an entirely different culture. Windows users are used to paying for software (starting with the OS), and Linux users aren't. So the monetization strategies are different. For Sublime, that seems to be primarily a Windows program that tried to cross over, so it's not surprising it would reflect that history.
It's an entirely different culture. Windows users are used to paying for software (starting with the OS), and Linux users aren't. So the monetization strategies are different. For Sublime, that seems to be primarily a Windows program that tried to cross over, so it's not surprising it would reflect that history.
You are right I've totally never seen any funding messages in NPM :)
I did say "offhand"; I'm not personally familiar with npm. There is some stuff like this in Linux-land if you know where to look, of course, such as the message in Vim, but even there you only see it if you start the program without any filename argument, or look in the docs, so it's hard to call that "nagware", which usually means something that won't allow you to use the software without first reading and acknowledging the advertisement.
Good point. I must have donated at some point because I use it often and don't remember seeing that.
I've donated twice but i havent done the big amount so it still bothers me
Does it support page dewarping[1] and 1bit color Palette PNG in PDF so shrink filesize[2]? I would love to See these features...
1: https://github.com/LittleTrickster/PDF-Doc-Scan/issues/17#is...
2: https://github.com/LittleTrickster/PDF-Doc-Scan/issues/7#iss...
1: https://github.com/LittleTrickster/PDF-Doc-Scan/issues/17#is...
2: https://github.com/LittleTrickster/PDF-Doc-Scan/issues/7#iss...
This functionality is already built into the iPhone - in the Notes app, and also in the Files app. What does your software add?
Why is my first thought that this has a clever backdoor to find passwords and crypto keys?
Probably one of many
[deleted]
Integrated, single purpose app. Most people don’t even know Notes has OCR. I didn’t until late last year, even though I’ve been iPhone user since the original came out.
The camera and photos.app has ocr as well.
Whenever im wanting to copy text on an app that hijacks the clipboard (LinkedIn/Slack) I take a screenshot, highlight the text, and copy as you would normally.
Whenever im wanting to copy text on an app that hijacks the clipboard (LinkedIn/Slack) I take a screenshot, highlight the text, and copy as you would normally.
Try searching universally for stuff like invoice and you will get a copy of the invoices you have taken a picture of.
Google photos has a feature where it recognizes documents like credit cards and so you can search for them.
Google photos has a feature where it recognizes documents like credit cards and so you can search for them.
For Android I recommend "OSS Document Scanner" it is just as good as MS Lens and CamScanner in my experience.
- https://github.com/Akylas/OSS-DocumentScanner
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38848423
- https://github.com/Akylas/OSS-DocumentScanner
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38848423
Awesome that it's free, open-source, and ad-free. My understanding is you have to pay to publish even free apps on the App store - are the devs providing this at their own expense?
Dev here - we already have a developer membership from our other (monetized) apps, so releasing this doesn't cost us any additional money.
I thought it was only $100 a year
What benefit does Open Scanner have over using the "Scan Document" iPhone shortcut? For sync/sharing I usually just AirDrop the scan to my Mac.
Nothing if you like it that way.
“Hey siri, scan document”.
I guess you can provide an alt for people who didn’t activate siri.
I guess you can provide an alt for people who didn’t activate siri.
Just long click on Notes app. Or click the … in Files.
And found a third method: send a shortcut to home screen to scan document.
I will certainly give it a try, because I am not 100% happy with SwiftScan anymore.
The biggest threat to these kinds of apps is getting bought by one of the big app boutique shops and being neglected.
SwiftScan started as an ambitious project by a small shop of dedicated people, but since it has been sold it started to show some cracks.
The biggest threat to these kinds of apps is getting bought by one of the big app boutique shops and being neglected.
SwiftScan started as an ambitious project by a small shop of dedicated people, but since it has been sold it started to show some cracks.
Related tangent: IF you already use Dropbox, FYI the Dropbox iOS app's scan feature is excellent.
When it says it saves it to its own library, does this mean scans will not appear in Photos? Is there a way to clean up older files in the library?
That’s right, scans don’t appear in Photos. You can delete pages or scans with the usual iPhone controls (swipe left to show the Delete button, etc.)
I would love paperless-ngx export support for this
There is Paperparrot[1] which allows to directly scan documents or add existing documents to your paperless instance from your phone.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/paperparrot/id1663665267
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/paperparrot/id1663665267
There’s also swift-paperless: https://github.com/paulgessinger/swift-paperless
A workaround is to export the PDF to a network folder which is configured as the paperless-ngx "consumption" folder.
Document scanning is built into Files and Notes.
1.3 MB download.