How to scan documents with your iPhone, and find them again

Contents6 sections

1. How do I scan a document on iPhone?
2. Can I copy or search the text in a scan?
3. How do I sign or fill in a scanned form?
4. How do I scan a document on Android?
5. How do I find a scan again later?
6. Questions people ask

Open a note, tap the Attachments button, then Scan Documents. Hold the iPhone over the page and it captures it automatically. Tap Done (Save on iOS 18) and the scan is saved as a PDF in the note. Files and Preview can scan too. Give each scan a name and a home, or it's hard to find later.

How do I scan a document on iPhone?

With the Notes app. It’s built in, so there’s nothing to install.

Apple’s Notes guide for iOS 26 gives these steps:

1. Open a note, or start a new one.
2. Tap the Attachments button, then Scan Documents.
3. Hold the iPhone over the page. It captures the page by itself once it finds the edges. To take it yourself, tap the automatic capture button to turn it off, tap the shutter, drag the corners to fit the page, then tap Keep.
4. Scan any more pages, then tap Done.

On iOS 18 and earlier the last button is Save instead of Done. Either way, Apple says “the document is saved as a PDF in the note”. So a scan to PDF on iPhone needs no extra app: the PDF is what Notes makes. In iOS 26 you can also pick the flash or a colour filter before you start.

The Files app has the same scanner. Apple’s Files guide says to open the folder where you want the scan, tap the More button (the three dots) at the top, then Scan Documents. Apple’s scanning article (published February 2026) finishes it: tap Done, “choose a location, then tap Save”. This is the better choice for paperwork you want as a file, because it lands in a folder rather than inside a note.

Preview arrived on iPhone with iOS 26. Apple’s Preview guide says “you can scan text or a document to create a PDF”: open Preview and tap Scan Documents.

App	How to start	Where the scan goes	Searching its text
Notes	Attachments > Scan Documents	A PDF inside the note	Notes search finds text in scans
Files	More > Scan Documents	The folder you choose	Files searches names, folders and type
Preview (iOS 26 and later)	Scan Documents	A PDF	Not stated by Apple
Google Drive (Android)	Camera, or Plus > Scan	A Drive folder, as PDF or JPG	Google calls them searchable PDFs
Files by Google (Android)	Scan	Downloads > Scanned, as a PDF	Google calls them searchable PDFs

Can I copy or search the text in a scan?

Yes, in a few places. They don’t all work the same way.

Notes search reads your scans. Apple’s Notes search page says you can search “typed and handwritten text, objects in images, and text in scanned documents”. Inside one note, tap the Note Actions button, then Find in Note, and select Include Attachments to search the PDF too.

Live Text copies text from a photo. If you photographed the page rather than scanning it, open it in Photos, tap the Detect Text button, then touch and hold to copy. Apple’s Live Text page says it works “in Safari, Photos, Camera, Quick Look, and more”, and that it isn’t available in every region or language. It’s switched on at Settings > General > Language & Region.

Spotlight searches text in photos. Apple’s search guide says you can find “text in your photos using Live Text” with Spotlight. It says nothing about PDFs.

Files searches by name. Apple’s Files search page says to enter “a filename, folder name, or document type”. So a scan saved to Files is found by its name, not by what it says. Our guide to searching inside PDFs and scans covers the tools that read the words.

If you only need the words, not the page, Notes has Scan Text under the same Attachments button. Select the text in the camera view and tap Insert, and it goes into the note as typed text.

How do I sign or fill in a scanned form?

The quickest way on iOS 26 is Preview. Apple’s form-filling page says:

1. Open the PDF in Preview.
2. Tap the Form Filling button.
3. Tap a field and type, or tap the AutoFill suggestion above the keyboard.
4. To add a signature or a text box, tap the Add button.

AutoFill fills in your details “as long as you’ve completed your My Card in the Contacts app”, per Apple’s guide to forms and signatures. The same page covers the Files app: open the document, tap the AutoFill button, then Add > Add Signature, sign with your finger and tap Done.

For a scan that’s still in a note, Apple’s scanning article gives the Notes route. Tap the document, tap the Markup button, tap Add, then Signature, and place it on the page. Our guide to signing a PDF on iPhone and Android covers the other ways, and when a signature drawn on a phone counts.

How do I scan a document on Android?

Google Drive has a scanner built in. Google’s Drive help gives the steps:

1. Open Google Drive and tap Camera at the bottom right.
2. Point the camera at the page. A blue line shows where it will crop.
3. Take the photo. You can switch between Manual and Auto capture.
4. Use Crop & Rotate, Filter or Clean if it needs it, and Add for more pages.
5. Tap Done, name it, choose .pdf or .jpg, pick a folder under Location, then tap Save.

Google says this saves letters and receipts “as searchable PDFs on your Google Drive”. On a Pixel, Google’s camera help lists Plus > Scan in Drive as the other way in.

Files by Google scans too. Tap Scan at the bottom right. Its help page says scans “are automatically saved as PDFs” in a Scanned folder inside Downloads, which you reach at Documents > Scanned.

On a Pixel, the Google Camera app shows a Scan document prompt when you point it at a page. Tap it, then Done to save, download or share.

On a Samsung Galaxy, the Camera app shows a Scan button when it sees a document. Samsung’s US support page (May 2026) says to tap Scan, then Save, and that “the document will be saved in the Gallery app”. It’s an image there. For a PDF, Samsung says you can edit it in Samsung Notes and export it as one.

How do I find a scan again later?

This is where scans go missing. The scanner is easy. Finding the water bill from March is not.

The trouble is that each app keeps scans somewhere different. A Notes scan lives inside a note, in your iCloud or On My iPhone account. A Files scan sits in whichever folder was open when you tapped More. A Samsung scan is a photo among your photos. Three habits help:

• Pick one home. A single folder in Files, such as Paperwork, beats a scan in every app.
• Rename it straight away. In Notes, tap the PDF’s Menu button and choose rename. Apple’s PDF page lists copy, share, rename and delete there. Put the date and the sender in the name, because Files search reads names, not contents.
• Use the search that reads text. For scans in Notes, search Notes. For photos of documents, Spotlight.

Siftlo takes on the last part. It reads the text in your PDFs and scans on the phone, free and unmetered, so searching for a policy number finds the document instead of relying on its name. That covers the folders you let it see and photos of documents in your camera roll. A scan kept inside a note isn’t in either, so share it into Files first if you want Siftlo to find it.

It can also make the scan. Scan a document, in Siftlo’s Documents tools, opens your phone’s own scanner (Apple’s on iPhone, Google’s on Android), saves the pages as a PDF in its Documents folder or a folder you pick, and with Make it searchable left on, reads the text on the phone straight after saving. Nothing is sent anywhere, and scanning is free.

Once it’s a PDF, the other document tools work on it on the phone: Merge or split, Compress PDF and Sign, which is three documents a month on the free plan. Summarise is the exception. It’s a cloud job, so Siftlo asks before it sends anything, deletes the file after use, and counts it against five free jobs a month. The pricing page has every allowance, and the features page shows the rest of what it does. Siftlo works on iOS 16 or later and Android 11 or later.

Questions people ask

Do scans in Notes sync to my other Apple devices?

Only if the note is in your iCloud account. Apple says iCloud notes appear on your iPhone, iPad and Mac where you're signed in. Notes in the On My iPhone account stay on the phone and are included in its iCloud backups.

Will Notes search find the text in a scan inside a locked note?

No. Apple says that if a note is locked, only its title appears in the search results. Give a locked note a title you'll remember.

Can I edit a scan after I've saved it in Notes?

Yes, within limits. Apple lists Rotate Left, Rotate Right, Filters, Crop Page and Insert Blank Page for PDFs in Notes, and says Filters and Crop Page work only on scanned documents.