Scan, OCR, sign and edit PDFs on iPhone & iPad. Version 1.0.11
PDF Scanner turns your camera into a fast, accurate document scanner and gives you a full PDF editor in the same app. With Pro, scans are automatically OCR’d so you can search every word — even printouts and your own notes — and the editor lets you enhance pages, reorder them, mark them up, add text, redact, drop in a signature, and fill PDF form fields. Documents stay on your device and in your own iCloud Drive. PDF Scanner is free to use; an optional Pro upgrade removes ads and the export watermark, unlocks every page and opens up the full editor. The free tier shows ads — served by Google AdMob up to version 1.0.8, and by Unity LevelPlay (ironSource) from version 1.0.9 (see the Privacy Policy).
Yes. PDF Scanner is a universal app and uses Apple’s built-in document camera, which gives you the same edge-detection, perspective-correction and filters on both iPhone and iPad.
PDF Scanner uses Apple’s on-device Vision text recognition at its highest accuracy setting, with language correction enabled. Recognition runs entirely on your device — nothing is uploaded.
You can scan, import, view, organize and search documents for free, in as many folders as you like. On the free tier a document opens to its first 3 pages — nothing you scan is ever thrown away, the remaining pages simply unlock with Pro — and exported files carry a subtle “PDF Scanner” mark across each page together with a small footer line. From version 1.0.12, whenever you enhance a page the app saves a picture of it as it looked beforehand — unless you switch that off under … → Settings. That happens on the free tier too, so the copies you build up now are still there if you upgrade later, though reverting a page to one is a Pro feature from version 1.0.13, and it brings back the picture only. PDF Scanner Pro removes the watermark, unlocks every page, and opens up the full editor: text recognition (OCR) and in-document search, markup, signatures, form filling, add text, redaction, App Lock, merge/split/extract/password-protect, all enhance filters, and reverting an enhanced page to the picture saved before it was enhanced. Pro is available as a monthly or yearly subscription, or a one-time lifetime purchase. The free tier also shows ads — a banner, an occasional full-screen ad at a natural break, and an optional rewarded video — and going Pro removes all of them.
Open the crown / membership button in the app to see your plan, renewal date, and price, and to manage or cancel. Subscriptions are billed by Apple and can also be managed any time in Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions. New device or reinstalled the app? Tap Restore Purchases on the membership screen.
Yes, for one export at a time. On a free export you can export with the watermark, or go Pro to remove it for good — and whenever an ad is available there is a third choice: watch a short ad to drop the watermark from that single export. If no ad is available at that moment the watch-an-ad button simply isn’t shown, and the other two choices still work. Going Pro is the only way to remove it permanently — and it removes the ads too.
Yes. From version 1.0.6, markup and signatures are saved as real PDF annotations rather than being flattened into the page, so they stay editable: reopen Markup to rub strokes out with the eraser, or use Erase Marks in the … menu to tap a whole mark away. The page keeps its searchable text either way. If you want the marks made permanent, Flatten (Make Permanent) in the … menu bakes them in — that step can’t be undone, and it does replace the marked pages with images. Marks applied by older versions were already flattened and can’t be recovered.
Yes, from version 1.0.13 — and it is a Pro feature. Open a document, tap Enhance, and choose Sharp Text in the filter row. It is built for pages whose print is simply pale — faint toner, a carbon copy, a faded receipt — and for pages photographed under uneven light. It works on documents you scanned months ago just as well as on ones you scan today, and the All pages switch applies it to a whole document at once.
It is not the same as turning the contrast up, and that difference is the whole point. One setting applied to the whole page cannot tell a pixel that is dark because it is ink from a pixel that is dark because it is in shadow, so raising contrast deepens the shadow along with the print — usually the very thing you were trying to get away from. Sharp Text works out how the light fell across the page and divides that back out first, so the paper evens out; only then does it darken what is left. With the lighting already evened out there is no shadow left for that darkening to deepen, so it can go considerably further than a slider safely could, and the same page shot in flat light, in light coming from one side, or in your own shadow comes out looking much the same.
What it is deliberately not for, so that it does not surprise you: evening out the light lifts broad flat areas towards the colour of the paper, and “broad” here means anything wider than roughly a tenth of the page — about 2.6cm on A4. A photograph, a grey watermark or a shaded table header is already inside that and will come back paler than it went in. Use it on pages that are mostly text; Auto, which is free, stays the better choice for anything picture-heavy. Nothing on the page changes until you tap Apply, and afterwards Revert to Original — also Pro — puts the page back to the copy saved before you enhanced it.
Yes, from version 1.0.13 — and it is a Pro feature. When you enhance a page, PDF Scanner first keeps a copy of that page as it was before you enhanced it, and that happens for everyone, free or Pro. It is the first copy that is kept, so enhancing the same page again later still goes back to the way it started. With Pro, Revert to Original under the preview on the Enhance screen puts that page back to it, and Revert to Originals in the Pages editor does the whole document at once. Because the copies are kept on the free tier as well, upgrading later gets you back every page that still has a picture stored for it — which means pages you enhanced from version 1.0.12 onwards, with Keep originals switched on. What comes back is the picture only: the searchable text layer, fillable form fields, and anything you added after the copy was taken are not part of it, and marks that were already on the page return as flat pixels you can no longer erase. The copies live alongside your documents — in your own iCloud Drive when iCloud is on, where they count toward your iCloud storage — and under … → Settings you can see how much space they use, turn them off, or free up that space. A page you enhance while they are switched off has no copy to go back to.
PDF Scanner stores documents directly in the app’s own iCloud Drive folder, so they appear in the Files app under iCloud Drive → PDF Scanner and sync across your devices. You can also share a document and choose Save to Files → iCloud Drive.
Yes. Signatures are kept in a local signature library, so you draw (or scan) one once and then just drag and resize it onto each page. Tap Sign to pick a saved signature, Draw New to add another, or Manage to change a signature’s ink color, edit its strokes, or delete one you no longer need. From version 1.0.8 you can also Scan a signature you have written on paper — photograph it and the app lifts the ink onto a transparent background. The library never leaves your device.
Your documents and the text recognized from them stay on your device or in your own iCloud Drive — we never see them, and we run no servers. The free version shows ads, and the advertising company collects limited device and ad-interaction data to serve them: Google AdMob in versions up to 1.0.8, and Unity LevelPlay (ironSource), serving Unity Ads and ironSource Ads, from version 1.0.9. iOS asks whether the app may track you; you can decline and still use everything, and you will simply see non-personalized ads. Pro members see no ads and are not asked. See the Privacy Policy for full details.
Please email mwsupplylimited@gmail.com with your iOS version, device, and steps to reproduce. We read every message.
For support: mwsupplylimited@gmail.com
See the PDF Scanner Privacy Policy.