As most smartphones pack a good camera nowadays, you don’t need bulk scanners or printers to scan office documents anymore. Some apps on the Google Play Store allow you to scan documents in high quality while also making the overall scanning process faster and more efficient. Hence, in this article, let’s look at some of the best Android scanner apps you can download in 2022.
A few advantages of using a popular Android scanner app are that it lets you access documents from the cloud, has powerful editing features, and some even come with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) support.
Note that Android scanner apps are different from barcode scanner apps. The former is used to scan text documents and images, while the latter is for scanning QR barcodes. If you want to scan a barcode, this list of barcode scanner apps might be helpful.
Adobe Scan is one of the best scanner apps for Android. It allows you to scan notes, forms, documents, receipts, and images and convert them to PDF files. It is simple and effective to use. Once you point your phone’s camera at the document you want to scan, it will automatically recognize and scan it.
It even allows you to reorder the pages as needed and color-correct any of the pages. Also, there is a built-in OCR that lets you reuse scanned content. You can also scan multiple pages and put them in a single PDF file.
Furthermore, the document scanner app allows you to send your scanned files via email or upload them to the cloud. Overall, Adobe Scan covers almost all the essential features. The best part about the app is that it is free with no ads, making it one of the best Android scanner apps.
App Installs: Over 50 million
Google Play Store Rating: 4.7
Adobe Scan for Android
You probably didn’t see this coming. We were also surprised when we discovered that the Google Drive app for Android has an inbuilt option to scan documents. If you have Google Drive installed on your smartphone, you can use your phone as a scanner. The process of scanning documents with Google Drive is a piece of cake.
While this tool isn’t as feature-rich as the other Android scanner apps on this list, it’s the easiest way to scan documents as Google Drive comes preinstalled on all Android smartphones.
To find the scanner option in the Drive app, locate the ‘+’ button in the bottom right corner, and tap on it. It will reveal new options, including the ‘Scan’ option. You’ll need to grant camera permission for the Google scanner feature to work. The tool has essential crop and adjustment features for the document, color change options, image quality selector, etc.
Overall, the document scanner app is a good alternative for users who rarely use Android scanner apps and don’t want a dedicated one to fill up their phone storage.
App Installs: Over 5 billion
Google Play Store Rating: 4.3
Google Drive for Android
Clear Scan for Android quickly scans any documents or images from your phone. You can convert your scanned documents and images to PDF or JPEG format. This excellent scanner app for Android is lightweight and offers fast processing.
You can print the scanned documents or pictures by using Cloud Print. The free scanner app offers various professional editing features even after saving the images to the gallery.
You can also save multiple pages within one document, reorder pages, set page sizes for PDF, etc. It has cloud support for Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox. Clear Scanner is free to download; however, it features intrusive ads, which may ruin your experience.
App Installs: Over 10 million
Google Play Store Rating: 4.7
Clear Scan for Android
Office Lens is another best free Android scanner app developed by Microsoft for scanning documents and whiteboard images. You can quickly capture any document and convert images to PDF, Word, or PowerPoint files.
It also allows you to save your files to OneNote, OneDrive, or your local storage. The app is relevant for both business and school purposes. Apart from English, it also works in German, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese. The best part? It’s completely ad-free and does not contain any in-app purchases, which makes it one of the best scanner apps on Android.
App Installs: Over 10 million
Google Play Store Rating: 4.7
Office Lens for Android
If you are looking for the best scanner app for Android, not to scan documents but to scan old printed photos, then PhotoScan by Google is the perfect fit for you.
The Android app scans photos instantly and removes glare, if any, automatically. So, lighting conditions are not something you should worry about; instead, you should focus on finding your old photo album. The app also crops up images based on the edge detection feature.
After scanning the printed images, you can immediately upload them to Google Photos online storage and share them with your friends and family.
App Installs: Over 10 million
Google Play Store Rating: 4.3
PhotoScan for Android
Tiny Scanner is a reliable document scanning app for Android that delivers most of the standard features. The app doesn’t require you to log in before use so you can get started immediately.
You can scan documents, receipts, reports, or other files and save them in PDF format. The Android scanner app supports all popular cloud storage services and allows you to print your necessary files within minutes.
Moreover, it has auto edge detection that can help prevent distortion by straightening the images. The app features five contrast levels, a quick search by document title, passcode protection for important files, etc.
Tiny scanner has both ads and in-app purchases to remove those ads.
App Installs: Over 10 million
Google Play Store Rating: 4.7
Tiny Scanner for Android
TurboScan is a powerful, fully-featured Android scanner app with a free and paid version. It allows you to scan and share multi-page documents in high-quality PDFs or JPEGs. It features a “SureScan” mode for very sharp scans and includes multi-page editing features such as page adding, reordering, and deleting.
You can also use this phone scanner app to organize multiple receipts or business cards on a single PDF page. You can open PDFs or JPEGs in other apps like Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, etc., or print your necessary documents using Cloud Print.
Turbo Scan is ad-free and offers in-app purchases.
App Installs: Over 1 million
Google Play Store Rating: 4.6
TurboScan for Android
If we are talking about the best scanner apps for Android, the Smart Doc Scanner fits perfectly into the category. It covers many essential features for document scanning. It has support for OCR to read text from images in more than 40 languages and also includes spelling checks. You can set page size, enable batch-scanning mode for multi-page documents, and many more features. It also comes with crop and zoom features to scan pages better.
The document scanner app supports output in almost all the popular image formats such as JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIP, and WebP. It is also integrated with Dropbox, Google Drive, and other cloud storage options.
The app doesn’t display ads or offer in-app purchases.
App Installs: Over 1 million
Google Play Store Rating: 4.6
Smart Doc Scanner for Android
Fast Scanner is another reliable document scanning app that features most typical functions. It allows you to scan any document, export it to PDF or JPEG format, add multiple edits to scanned documents, etc. You can also add new pages or delete existing pages within the file. Moreover, you can print your documents using Cloud Print.
The document scanner app for Android is free to download and contains ads.
App Installs: Over 10 million
Google Play Store Rating: 4.6
Fast Scanner for Android
Genius Scan is another free scanner app for Android that you can use to scan documents. The app is fast in document detection and does a remarkable job when it comes to precise automatic cropping. You will rarely feel the need to tweak the dimensions after the auto-crop.
Other than that, it has standard document editing features such as the option to remove shadows, apply filters, batch scanning, create multiple-page PDFs, and more. The app does a wonderful job when it comes to cleaning the document.
However, you will notice that the quality of PDF documents is not as good as you would see in other PDF scanner apps on this list.
App Installs: Over 5 million
Google Play Store Rating: 4.8
Genius Scan for Android
As the name suggests, OpenScan is an open-source file scanner application. It’s pretty basic at best, but as its code is available to the public, you needn’t worry about the app stealing and selling your data. OpenScan is pretty straightforward to use.
You can open the camera and scan a document or open images from the gallery to convert them into documents. The best part is that the app has no intrusive ads. Overall, it is one of the best Android scanner apps for scanning documents.
App Installs: Over 10,000
Google Play Store rating: 4.5
OpenScan for Android
These were our picks for the best Android scanner apps of 2022. But choosing the right one depends on what kind of usage you’re looking for.
Whether you want a pre-loaded and easy-to-use document scanner like Google Drive or Office Lens, or if you’re searching for feature-rich apps, you might want to go for Clear Scanner, Adobe Scanner, Fast Scanner, etc.
Adobe Scan and Office Lens are liked by many users and, therefore, are the best free scanner apps for Android. However, you will find many options in this list as well.
2. Can I scan a document with my Android phone?Yes! You can scan documents using the camera of your Android device. Through the Android scanner app, you will also have the option to create a PDF version of your document.
3. Which app is the best for scanning documents?In my opinion, for scanning documents with precision, PhotoScan is the best Android app you can find. The quality of a Google app reflects when you start using this one.
A tech enthusiast who likes to stay updated on latest technological developments.
