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SwiftScan turns your phone into a scanner and frees you from paperwork Credit: Maple Media

Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

TL;DR: Get SwiftScan VIP for $41.99 with promo code TAKE30 until February 23 — a mobile scanner app designed for the eco-conscious.

Paper stacks up fast — receipts, contracts, class notes, sketches, you name it. Before you know it, your workspace is drowning in clutter. SwiftScan VIP makes it easy to ditch the mess and go fully digital by turning your phone into a powerful mobile scanner, just $41.99 when you enter code TAKE30 by February 23.

With just a tap, you can capture crisp PDFs or JPGs, edit text, add signatures, and share files instantly.

Beyond convenience, SwiftScan is an eco-friendly choice. Businesses and students print thousands of pages every year, leading to massive paper waste. With SwiftScan, you can digitally annotate, sign, and share documents without printing a single page. Whether you’re scanning invoices for your small business, converting class notes, or just trying to declutter, this app helps you stay organized while helping the planet.

SwiftScan isn’t just a scanner — it’s a full document management solution. If you need to edit a PDF, add a signature, or even convert a file to Word or Excel, the app has you covered. With cloud sync options for iCloud, Google Drive, and Dropbox, you’ll always have access to your files wherever you go. And since this is a lifetime subscription, you’ll never have to pay for scanning software again.

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A fast, affordable network scanner that combines good quality with great workflow management

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IT Pro Verdict

Pros

• +Excellent image quality
• +Speedy scan performance
• +Tons of OCR features

Cons

• –No cloud support

Fujitsu’s SP series has long been a great choice for USB scanning – and now the SP-1130N ups the ante. It’s one of three new network-enabled models, along with the 1120N and 1125N, that offer the same speeds as their deskbound counterparts but add a Gigabit Ethernet port, giving you the freedom to locate the scanner where you want and drive it from any computer on the network.

Software-wise, all three stick with Fujitsu’s PaperStream IP software suite – and we’ve no complaints about that, as it offers a wealth of image-processing and scan-management features. Batch scanning in particular is made easy: you can create jobs that scan and process multi-page documents with a single click, and use barcode recognition or OCR zones for document separation or data extraction.

The SP-1130N on review is the fastest of the new models, citing a scan speed of 30ppm for both mono and colour scans at 300dpi. A claimed 4,500-page daily duty cycle shows it’s ready for high demand, and the automatic document feeder (ADF) has room for 50 pages, with a built-in ultrasonic sensor to detect paper jams and multi-feeds.

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A single utility handles Windows host installation, offering the choice of USB or network port connections and loading the various PaperStream components. These include not only Fujitsu’s own software, but a custom version of ABBYY FineReader OCR, which adds options to export scans in a variety of Office document formats, or as searchable PDFs.

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Also included is ABBYY FineReader 12 Sprint, which provides a simpler alternative to PaperStream Capture for quick scans, along with a system tray tool that lets you assign a defined action to the scanner’s start button. The package is rounded out by a network setup tool, and an agent that links up with Fujitsu’s free Scanner Central Admin web service for scanner fleet management.

This may all sound like a lot to take in, but setting up a scan profile is a simple wizard-driven process. You start by choosing colour, greyscale or mono output, then pick a resolution from 150 to 600dpi, specify a paper size and select single or double-sided scanning. Next, you set your scan destination, which might be a local folder, a network location, an FTP or SharePoint server, a printer or an email address. The one place you can’t scan to is cloud storage as Fujitsu’s ScanSnap Cloud app is only available with its iX series of scanners.

Document separation for large batch scans can be enabled too, using blank pages, page counts, predefined OCR zones, barcodes or Fujitsu’s patch codes. You can also tell the software to extract data from scanned documents by dragging a box around the area where you want zonal OCR to be applied; the information within can then be exported as a TXT, CSV or XML file.

Finally, it’s time to select any processing options you want applied, such as page rotation, image adjustment and clean up, deskewing, hole filling and blank page removal.

Once we’d got our profiles set up, we were pleased to find that performance fully lived up to Fujitsu’s promises. Our well-thumbed wad of 30 bank statements was scanned on both sides in 55 seconds, in greyscale and colour and at 200dpi and 300dpi. Factor in the five-second wait for each network scan to start and you’re looking at 30ppm precisely. As usual, switching to 600dpi causes speeds to tumble �� in this case to just over 8ppm – but you’ll very rarely need to use such a high resolution because output quality at 200pdi is absolutely fine for document archival purposes. OCR performance is similarly good, with text as small as 6pt on our test bank statements being captured accurately.

Nor did we hit any problems with paper handling. Our till receipts and thin waybills passed through the scanner without any jams, and on the rare occasion when two pages were picked up at once, the multi-feed detector immediately spotted the problem and stopped the scan before any pages were damaged.

If cloud features are important to you then you may need to look elsewhere, but Fujitsu’s SP-1130N delivers good performance and great output quality at a very reasonable price. Factor in the highly capable PaperStream IP software and this desktop scanner is a top contender for SMBs that are looking to soup up their scanning provision.

Fujitsu SP-1130N specifications

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If you have some official documents to sign, scan and send but don’t have a proper scanner ready, don’t worry — just follow these steps.

However easy it is to digitally sign important documents, sometimes that won’t suffice. When you just have to put your signature on a physical document and digitally upload it, and you don’t have a standalone scanner handy, the easiest way to do it is in your pocket — your iPhone.

Yes, your iPhone doubles as a document scanner. It may not produce images as sharp as a dedicated scanner would, but it does a respectable job, even when the phone is positioned at odd angles trying to capture text. iPhones have had this hidden feature since iOS 11 launched in 2017, but as the cameras built into Apple phones have improved, so has their ability to take decent scans of documents. 

You won’t need to download additional software or pay for a third-party app — Apple’s Notes app that comes preinstalled on iPhones does the trick. The good news is that it’s quick and easy to scan a document, save it, and send it wherever it needs to go. Keep in mind that the new iOS 18 changes the icons you use to select document scanning, which we’ve noted below. If you’ve upgraded to iOS 18, the process will be different, but we’ll walk you through it. 

Here’s how to scan a document with your iPhone.

Scan a document with your iPhone or iPad

To scan a document with your iPhone or iPad, first place the document on a flat surface in a well-lit area. 

Open up the Notes app and either open an existing note or start a new one by tapping the New Note button in the bottom right corner (pencil-in-square icon). On iOS 17 versions and older, tap the Camera button at the bottom of the screen (or if you’re editing a note, the same Camera icon will be above the keyboard) and tap Scan Documents. If you’re on iOS 18, instead of a Camera icon, you’ll tap the Attachments button (the paperclip icon) and likewise tap Scan Documents.

This will open a version of the Camera app that just looks for documents. Once you position your iPhone over the document that needs scanning and in view of the camera, a yellow rectangular layer will automatically appear over the document showing approximately what will be captured. Hover over the document for a few seconds and the iPhone should automatically capture and scan the document, but you can also tap the Shutter button in the bottom center.  

Sign, share or save your scanned document

Once you’ve captured a document, you can tap it, and others you’ve captured in the same session, to edit them before saving them. You can also tap Retake in the top right corner to start again.

When you edit the document, you can re-crop it from the original photo captured (if you need to tweak its edges), switch between color filters (color, black and white, grayscale or the unedited original photo). Then you can save the scanned document.

Once it’s saved into a note, you can tap the Markup button (circled pen icon) at the bottom to sketch or scribble with different colors. If you tap the Add button on the bottom right (plus sign icon), you can add text, your signature, shapes or even stickers. 

To send or locally save the document, tap Share button at the top (the square-and-arrow icon) to send it via Messages or apps, copy it, save it locally to the Files app, print it out via linked printer or other options.

Why can’t I find the camera button to scan documents?

If you’re running iOS 18, the Camera button has been replaced with an Attachments button (paperclip symbol). It should function just the same: Tap it and choose Scan Documents from the dropdown menu

If you can’t see the Camera or the Attachments button, check to see if you’ve opened the note in either the iCloud section or the On My iPhone section — you’ll only be able to scan documents and save them in either of these places. If you can’t tell, tap Folders in the top left corner of the Notes screen and select either iCloud or On My iPhone. 

The documents scanner is just one of many unnoticed iPhone features that come prepackaged in Apple’s handsets, often nested in the apps that come with your phone. Some hidden iOS 18 features add even more surprising capabilities already on your iPhone. But you can also find ways to do other tasks, like making a GIF on your iPhone, using third-party apps and through your browser.

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Generate Key Takeaways

What you need to know

• Google is discontinuing Stack: PDF Scanner later this year, with the app ceasing to function on September 23.
• The app’s features, like automatic edge detection and document capture, have been integrated into Google Drive, making Stack redundant.
• Stack users can easily transfer their documents to Google Drive via an “Export all documents to Drive” option in Stack’s account settings.

To streamline its document management tools, Google is discontinuing “Stack: PDF Scanner” later this year, phasing out the app known for its scanning and organization features.

In a community post, a Google spokesperson confirmed that Stack: PDF Scanner has been permanently discontinued. The app will stop functioning entirely on September 23, and its listing has already been removed from the Google Play Store. This marks the definitive end of the document scanning app.

The rationale for shuttering the app seems logical. It was developed by Google’s internal Area 120 incubator, which no longer exists. Stack stood out for its user-friendly design. The app featured automatic edge detection and document capture, making scanning super easy with minimal effort. It also had a handy automated document categorization system. However, Google insists that these features are now integrated into Google Drive, making Stack unnecessary.

In November, the Drive app received a dedicated “Scan” function, as noted by 9to5Google. This new feature includes a custom viewfinder for better document alignment and more intuitive controls for a seamless scanning process.

The “Auto capture” mode automatically takes a picture when the document is optimally positioned, removing the need for manual clicks. There’s also a manual capture mode if you want to do things your way.

Using machine learning, Google Drive suggests relevant titles for scanned documents. For instance, when scanning a receipt, Drive might automatically add the store location and date.

The latest change marks a significant step in consolidating document management within Drive. Users can now rely on this all-in-one platform for scanning and organizing their important documents.

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This strategic move aligns with Google’s broader goal of streamlining its services.

To make things easier for Stack users, Google has set up a simple way to move everything over to Drive. If you’re used to using Stack, you can find an “Export all documents to Drive” option in the app’s account settings. This makes it a breeze to transfer all your documents to a specific folder in Drive, so the switch is smooth and hassle-free.