How to extract text from a scanned document on iPhone

ScanFile guide · On-device OCR

OCR—optical character recognition—turns the visible words in an image into text you can copy. The quality of the page you scan strongly affects the result.

1. Capture a readable page

Use even lighting, hold the phone steady, and let the printed text fill the frame. Correct the crop so the page is straight and remove unnecessary background.

2. Save and open the document

OCR is available from the saved document review. Open the scan and choose the Text action.

3. Let ScanFile recognize the text

ScanFile processes the document on your device and presents the recognized text. The document image and recognized content do not need to be uploaded to a ScanFile server for this step.

4. Copy what you need

Copy the result to the clipboard, then paste it into a note, message, form, spreadsheet, or search field.

How to improve a weak result

Retake a blurry page, reduce shadows, correct the crop, and try a document filter that separates the text from the paper without erasing light characters.