How To Use Your iPhone As a Scanner For Your Mac

You can use your iPhone as a scanner to scan documents directly to your Mac. No need to transfer from your iPhone to your Mac afterward. You can scan right to a file, into a new Preview PDF, or into a document or email message.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can scan documents into your Mac using your iPhone. 
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 2000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/Patreon. There you could read more about it. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.  
Now you may think that in order to scan documents into your Mac that you need a scanner. But, in fact, you can use your iPhone for this. I'm not talking about scanning to your iPhone and then transferring over to your Mac. I'm talking about using your iPhone as a scanner for the file to go directly to your Mac. 
For my first example I'm going to scan this two-page document into my Mac using my iPhone. I'm going to do it directly to a file. So, here I am in the Finder. If you select a folder, so let's say this Example folder here, and I Control Click on it, two-finger click on a trackpad, right click on a mouse, I can see the Context Menu. One of the options you should see here is Import From iPhone or iPad. Here I've got my iPhone and my iPad listed. Now the reason these are listed here is because they are using the same Apple ID. They are nearby and I've got BlueTooth and WiFi turned On for these devices. They should appear automatically. There's really nothing for you to do.
But if you want to dig more into this and what the requirements are checkout this page at Apple's site. It shows you which apps support this feature which is called Continuity Camera and it gives you some step-by-steps as well as requirements for using it. 
So here in the Context Menu I'm going to select Scan Documents. I can select Take Photo just to take a regular photo which is useful in other cases. But in this case I'm going to choose Scan Document. My iPhone is automatically going to react to that by bringing up this Scanning Interface. Now I can position iPhone to where it gets the full page. It should automatically take it. Then I'm going to go to the next page and it should automatically take that as well. But if it doesn't, for some reason, I can press this button that's here to automatically take it. I could also tap here to review the pages  here. I can just swipe between them and I can retake one. I can Crop and there are some other tools here as well. I can also Trash It. If it looks okay on review I can tap Done and go back to scanning. 
Notice there are also options here. For instance I can turn Off Auto. So I have to use that shutter button there. I also can turn On and Off the Flash if I want. I've got some options here. I can set it to Color, Gray Scale, Black & White or Photo. Those are the quality choices there. When I'm done with the scan, on my iPhone here I tap the Save button. It's going to Save. So here if I look in the folder now I'm going to see where it says Scanned Document. I can select it and I'll Quick Look and I'll see the document right there. Since it is a PDF if I double click on it I can actually open it up in Preview or I can work with it some more if I like. 
For instance I can go to the Markup Tools here and I can mark it up. I can use a selection tool here, for instance, and I can select an area of this page here and then under Tools I can go to Crop or Command K so I can further adjust things in Preview just like I would with any other pdf. Of course, also, I can Rename it now to something that makes more sense.
So in addition to the Context Menu here in the folder there are other ways to get to this functionality. For instance if I was in Icon View here, so I had some blank space I could click on, I could bring up the Context Menu here and actually Save the scan right to this same folder. You could also do it inside of apps. So, for instance, here I am in Preview. Instead of creating a new document or opening a document, I've got Import right here and I can Import a scan from the iPhone. 
So I'm going to do it again here and I'm just going to scan this receipt and then I'm going to tap Save and you can see here I've got that scan here. This is handy because I can now go in and edit it. So I'll go to Markup Tools here. I will Crop it here to only what I need and when I Save it I could actually Save the Format as a pdf. You might find under Quartz Filter the ability to use a reduced file size which will save something smaller. Or perhaps I could just save it as a jpeg and I could set the resolution here and the quality. 
So, notice if I Save this, I'll just save it to the Desktop, this saves a pretty small file right here. Only 46K. So if you're looking to save some space and have smaller scans that is one way to do it. But you can also save directly into apps. So, for instance here I'm in Pages and if I Control Click, right click, or two-finger click see I can insert a photo or a scanned document right here inside of this document here. So I'll let it take that photo and then I'll save it and you can see now I've got the image right inside of the Pages document. I don't have to save it in an intermediate file first. 
Notes is another place where you can easily scan. I can go to File and then Insert from iPhone or iPad here and I can scan a document right into a note. Or even an email message. I'll compose a new message here if I want to scan something and have it go directly into here I can Control Click, right click, two-finger click here and I've got the same Insert Menu to scan a document right into this message without having it being in a file first. 
So, of course, one of the biggest advantages doing this is you don't have to buy a completely different print device, like a scanner, or replace your printer with a printer/scanner combination if you need to scan in an occasional document. Downsides are it can get unwiedy to get large documents. If you've got a 40 page document to get through that's a lot of individual shots to take. But even that, if you don't need to do it too often it's pretty easy to do it on your iPhone and save the money and space on a scanner. Another downside is size. This technique really doesn't do much to conserve size so if you're worried about that then you definitely want to scan into Preview and do things there to reduce the size before you save  the file. Whereas a regular scanner may give you options to scan it pretty low resolution and gray scale all the time and create smaller pdf's. 
So I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 19 Responses to “How To Use Your iPhone As a Scanner For Your Mac”

Ralph Cosh

3 months ago

This article is extremely helpful, thank you. Is there a way to get this in written form? I would like to have it available for future reference. Thanks again.

Mark L

Great tool! Can I preform the same by only using my iPhone?

Barnsley Richard

Hi Ralph Cosh. Immediately under the video is “video transcript”. Copy it and paste it into notes or pages or wherever you want it and you have the whole video in written copy.

Cathy O

This scan feature is great. Thanks for all you do!

Nan H

I did not know about this and it will be a huge time saver!

Gary Rosenzweig

Ralph: As Richard points out, yes you can use the transcript.

Mark: Yes. https://macmost.com/how-to-scan-documents-with-your-iphone.html

Paul Guenther

This is an incredible tool! I would never have found it without your most valuable column. Thanks!

Neill

This is great and everything worked except import from iPhone using the Preview app. All items in the submenu were greyed out. Anyone know why?
Thanks

Jeff

SUCH a great tip! Thanks, Gary.

Brian

2 months ago

Thanks, Gary; very helpful.

Scott

I'm having the same issue with Preview - all options (iPhone / iPad) in the submenu are greyed out.

Just got off of a chat with Apple - they advised that this feature does not work directly from Preview (even though the menu shows it).

Scott: Do you see it in the Finder though? What if you connect your iPhone to your Mac via a cable? Obviously it does work in Preview as you can see me do it right in this video.

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

Wally & Janet Young

Gary, I do have an Epson scanner, love it, but for somehow like us who is always in a hardware-home improvement store this is beyond awesome! My friend is also planning to use this tip on her trip to Italy to scan all receipts. Many Thanks!

Alexander Konczey

When I rt click on the file I only have Share, Color circles, Tags. I don't have the scan option for my iPad or iPhone (15Pro mMax).

Alexander What are you tapping on, exactly? Tap the three-dots button.

How To Use Your iPhone As a Scanner For Your Mac

Comments: 19 Responses to “How To Use Your iPhone As a Scanner For Your Mac”

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