Did you know you can use your iPhone or iPad to scan documents? Rather than taking photos, you can capture multipage paper documents straight to PDF files.

Open Files

Oddly, Apple’s only documentation on this feature directs users to open Notes, where you can embed a document in a note. I prefer to use Files.

I’m not surprised if you haven’t heard of Files, an app Apple started offering with iOS 11, where you can access and organize the files you store in iCloud Drive, various other cloud storage platforms, as well as on your device.

The Venerable Button

First, prepare your document. That is, choose a clean, opaque surface where you can lay each page one at a time. Then, in Files on your device, tap Browse and then tap  at the top. Choose Scan Documents.

By default, Auto mode is active and your device will capture and crop each page automatically as detected. You’ll need to hold your device steadily so its camera can scan efficiently. After each page, remove it, place the next one, and capture.

When the scan is complete, tap Save. Then, tap the name (“Scanned Document” by default) and rename the file.

Lighten the Load

The PDFs created when scanning documents this way can be pretty big files. If you are just scanning text, they needn’t be so huge, so I recommend slimming down the result.

macOS includes built-in tools for making PDFs smaller, but using them directly is a little arcane and difficult to accomplish. I recommend using an app like Lightweight PDF, which makes this action super simple.

Note, however, that Lightweight PDF directly replaces the files you input and has no undo command, so you may want to run it on a copy first. (Command+D will duplicate a selected file in the Finder. When you’re satisfied, move extraneous files to the trash with Command+Delete.)

That’s all there is to it! And if you use iCloud Drive or other platforms on your Mac, too, the documents you scan will sync and appear there as well.