Andy Walker / Android Authority
There comes a time when all great apps must die, especially if Microsoft owns them. Redmond has taken many tools away from me, from Sunrise Calendar to Wunderlist, and now it’s hooking Microsoft Lens from the stage. The PDF scanner app made it easy to grab physical documents and transform them into digital copies without a bulky scanner. It was nothing fancy, but it did its job effortlessly.
While Lens is undoubtedly one of the more useful tools Microsoft has given Android, there are plenty of alternatives you should now turn to instead. For those office-related tasks of signing documents digitally, scanning book pages page by page, or keeping tabs of receipts, here are the best PDF scanner apps you should opt for instead.
What PDF scanner app will you use once Microsoft Lens is shuttered? 20 votes OneDrive 15 % Google Drive 10 % OSS Document Scanner 5 % Adobe Scan 55 % Clear Scanner 0 % PDFgear Scan 10 % Genius Scan 0 % SwiftScan 0 % Notebloc 5 % I will use another app (mention which in the comments). 0 %
OneDrive
Andy Walker / Android Authority
If you can forgive Microsoft for migrating Lens’ features into its other products, you may as well stay within the company’s ambit. OneDrive is perhaps the best candidate for your PDF scanning needs, as it now houses many of Lens’ core functionalities.
While Lens was free to use, OneDrive requires a login to access its scanning features. The app also has an annoying habit of bombarding users with cloud storage offers before they can access the scanning functionality. Bad form, Microsoft.
Nevertheless, the scanning experience on OneDrive is as simple as pointing and shooting, even if it lacks Lens’s more nuanced features, like file type selection and OCR.
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