I was today years old when I discovered that the iPhone Notes app has a half-decent document to PDF scanner baked in. Goodbye subscription PDF app.

For better or worse, PDF-formatted documents are an integral part of the electronic ecosystem we live in.

I am sure you have needed to scan some paper documents to PDF format either to send to someone or to file away for later.
There are plenty of PDF scanner apps available, and although they have plenty of advanced functionality they usually require a yearly subscription (don’t get me started) or are littered with ads.

Free simple PDF scanner.

You probably didn’t realise that you already have a simple document-to-PDF scanner right there on your iPhone. It allows you to scan documents, do some simple cropping and editing and save them to your files or send via email etc.

Here is what to do:

1. Open the Notes app that comes with your iPhone.
2. Press the new document icon on the lower right of screen.
3. Select the camera icon on the lower toolbar just above the keyboard.
4. From the popup menu select Scan Documents.
5. Position the document in the screen. It will be automatically scanned. Once completed position your next document. When finished hit the Save icon.
6. You can do some simple editing by selecting the file and selecting the little (what the heck is that….a clapboard, a filmstrip?) icon on the top right (figure 1.)
7. You can then select the individual page to edit (Figure 2.).

You can then save this document to your files or add to an email attatchment as you usually would.

You are welcome.