

Having an OCR function that works in multiple languages is a huge plus, too. The apps also need tools for adjusting brightness, correcting color, and selecting grayscale output instead of black and white when needed. Tools that let you manually adjust the cropping are important, for example, because sometimes apps get edge detection wrong. Some even have a Copy All Text function that lets you quickly pick up the text directly from the app and paste it into whatever app you want.įeatures aren't everything, but there are a few we like to see in mobile scanning and OCR apps.
#Best free scanning app to scan and e mail pdf
The best scanning and OCR apps let you save a PDF of whatever you scan and give you additional options for sharing, printing, and exporting your files. What you do with your files after you scan and digitize them matters tremendously. You do need a Microsoft account, however, to get the editable text.

We ultimately included it anyway because the results were very good, and the apps don't cost anything. The only one that doesn't, Microsoft OfficeLens, requires a secondary app to complete the process. Four of the apps that made this list meet this criteria. Ideally, you want to be able to scan your document and be able to use the text from it immediately. We sought apps that offer scanning and digitizing in one. Therefore, auto-scan is a highly desirable feature. While not tapping a button may sound trivial, it allows your hands to hold the camera steady, resulting in a sharper image. Whatever you put in front of your phone's camera, the app scans without you having to tap a button (Microsoft OfficeLens being the one exception). All the apps that made this final list have that capability and use it by default. The best mobile scanning and OCR apps have a default automatic scanning function that puts text in focus and accurately detects the edges of documents.
#Best free scanning app to scan and e mail full
For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site-we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software.
