A scanner app for students: notes, handouts and assignments
Updated
Doc Scanner is a scanner app for students that turns handouts, class notes, textbook pages and finished assignments into one clean, searchable PDF on iPhone and Android. Hold your phone over the page and smart edge detection finds the corners, straightens the perspective and captures it for you, page after page.
The free plan covers what school actually asks for: multi-page PDFs, filters that make faint photocopies readable, a highlighter, signatures for permission slips and forms, and sharing to your class portal or e-mail. No ads, no watermarks on your submissions and no sign-up.
Scan with your phone camera to get the app
Doc Scanner by Ginowl — iPhone & Android · Free to download
How to turn a stack of handouts into one PDF
Open Batch mode
Tap the camera button in Doc Scanner and switch the camera to Batch.
Scan every page
Hold your phone over each page in turn. Doc Scanner finds the edges, corrects the perspective and captures automatically.
Clean up the pages
Crop or rotate where needed, pick B&W or Contrast and tap Apply to all pages. Use Reorder to fix the page order.
Name and file it
Rename the document after the class and week, then move it to that subject's folder.
Share the PDF
Tap Share, choose PDF, set the quality and page size, and send it through the share sheet to your class portal, your files or an e-mail.
Scan notes and handouts
Open the camera and choose Document for a single sheet, or Batch when you have a stack. Doc Scanner detects each page, corrects the angle and captures automatically, so you can flip through a week of handouts in a couple of minutes.
Then make the pages easy to read:
- B&W or Contrast turns grey photocopies and pencil notes into crisp black on white.
- Magic Color keeps highlighted textbooks, diagrams and colour slides vivid.
- Lighten rescues pages shot under a dim desk lamp.
- Apply to all pages sets the same filter on the whole document in one tap.
Rename each scan (“Biology – Week 3 handouts”) and file it in a folder per subject. A full walkthrough is in how to scan notes to PDF.
Chapters and textbooks
Need a chapter for the bus ride, or pages from a library book you can't take home? Scan up to 100 pages into one PDF in a single session, then add, reorder or delete pages later if you missed one.
Tips for book pages:
- Press the book open with one hand and scan one page at a time; the curve near the spine is what blurs most scans.
- Work on a flat table with light coming from the side or above, so your phone doesn't shadow the page.
- Fine-tune with the corner handles in Crop if the edge detection catches your fingers.
Every PDF you export gets an invisible text layer for printed text, on the free plan, so you can search a scanned chapter for a term the night before the exam. Scan for your own study and follow your school's and library's rules on copying. More in how to scan book pages.
Submit assignments as one PDF
Most class portals want a single PDF, not ten loose photos. Scan the worksheet with Batch, check the order with Reorder, delete a blurry page and rescan it, then tap Share:
- Choose PDF.
- Pick Medium quality if the portal limits file size, or High for detailed diagrams.
- Set the page size to A4 or Letter, whichever your school uses.
- Use Select pages if only part of the scan belongs in this submission.
- Save the file through the share sheet (to Files on iPhone or a downloads folder on Android), then upload it in Canvas, Google Classroom or any other portal, or attach it to an e-mail.
Your teacher sees your work, not a “scanned by” stamp: Doc Scanner adds no watermarks. Need a cover sheet first? Scan it separately and use Merge to combine the two documents. Step-by-step for one portal: how to scan homework for Canvas.
Highlight and search your scans
Revision gets faster when your scans work like real documents. Tap Highlight to mark key lines on any scanned page in one of four colours, the way you would with a marker, then export the highlighted PDF to study from.
Search inside recognized text from the app's library to find the handout that mentioned “mitosis”, and on iPhone your documents can also appear in Spotlight search. AI-powered text recognition runs on your phone with Google ML Kit and works offline, which helps in a library basement with no signal.
With Premium, the Extract Text camera mode and the text screen let you copy printed text into your notes or share it as TXT, ideal for quoting a printed source accurately. Text recognition covers Latin-alphabet languages such as English, Spanish, French and German.
College applications
Applying to college or university means a pile of paper that has to end up as clean uploads: transcripts and certificates you received on paper, letters, signed forms and financial paperwork. Doc Scanner handles each one:
- One PDF per document, named clearly, so the admissions portal and the reader both know what they're looking at.
- Grayscale for official records that should look like a photocopy, not a photo.
- Sign forms with a signature you draw once and reuse, on the free plan.
- Both sides of a student ID or driver's license on one page with ID card mode (Premium). See how to scan an ID card.
- A passport copy for international applications: scan a passport.
When you e-mail sensitive papers rather than uploading them, you can add a password with AES-256 encryption (Premium). Upload portals usually can't open password-protected files, so leave those unlocked.
Free plan for students
Doc Scanner is free to download and has a free plan for scanning, signing and exporting PDFs. For students that covers the core of the semester: automatic edge detection, all six filters, crop and rotate, the highlighter, signatures, PDF export with a searchable text layer, JPG export, printing, sharing, folders and merging, with no ads and no watermarks.
Premium is an optional subscription that unlocks text extraction, ID card mode, Word and TXT conversion, password-protected PDFs and more. There's no separate student plan; the free plan is the same for everyone. See everything the free plan includes on the free scanner app page.
See Doc Scanner in action
Scan your first document in seconds
Doc Scanner is free to download for iPhone and Android. No ads, no watermarks, no sign-up required.
Scan with your phone camera to get the app
Frequently asked questions
What is the best scanner app for students?
We make Doc Scanner, so we're biased, but it covers what students need on the free plan: multi-page PDFs with auto-capture, filters for faint copies, a highlighter, free signatures and searchable PDFs, with no ads, no watermarks and no sign-up, on iPhone and Android. See our full ranking of the best scanner apps.
Is there a free scanner app for school?
Doc Scanner is free to download and has a free plan for scanning, signing and exporting PDFs. Premium unlocks text extraction, ID card mode, password-protected PDFs and more.
Can I scan textbook pages?
Yes. Scan one page at a time with the book pressed open, and Doc Scanner straightens each page and combines them into one PDF with a searchable text layer for printed text. Scan for your own study and follow your school's and library's rules on copying.
Can I upload my scans to Canvas or Google Classroom?
Yes. Share the scan as a PDF, save it through your phone's share sheet, then upload it in Canvas, Google Classroom or any portal that accepts PDF files. Doc Scanner adds no watermark to what you submit.
Will my class notes become searchable?
Printed text, such as handouts, slides and book pages, gets an invisible text layer when you export a PDF. Notes you wrote by hand are saved as clear, sharp images, so give each scan a descriptive name to find it quickly.
Doc Scanner is not affiliated with Canvas and Google Classroom. Trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Related pages
- Many pages, one PDFScan multiple pages into one PDF on iPhone or Android: Batch mode captures page after page, then reorder, add or merge. No watermarks, no ads, no sign-up.
- Searchable PDFMake a PDF searchable for free on iPhone or Android. Doc Scanner adds an invisible text layer to every PDF it exports, offline, with no upload needed.
- Sign PDFsSign a PDF on your phone for free: draw your signature once in Doc Scanner, reuse it on any page, export with no watermark. For iPhone and Android.
- Free scanner appDoc Scanner is a free scanner app for iPhone and Android: scan, sign and export searchable PDFs on the free plan. No ads, no watermarks, no sign-up.