If you’re an iPhone user, you probably didn’t know that Google Drive has a fairly usable, built-in document scanning feature.
Now, the feature’s got even better. According to Google, the scanner now has a dedicated button in the lower right corner. It also has an automatic capture feature, helping you get the best scan faster. The camera viewfinder will help you to position your document for the best possible scan, and there’s an option to import documents from your camera roll.
What does this have to do with the iPhone, you may ask? Well, Google finally made the scanner available on iOS, with all the new bells and whistles included.
There are two ways to access the feature. Either open the Drive app on your iOS device, and tap the new camera button, or tap the “+” icon, and hit Scan. You can scan several pages in one session if needed, as well as apply filters or crop the document after scanning it.
I’ve updated Google Drive to the latest version on my iPhone, and I still don’t see the feature, but Google says it should become available to all users within three days, starting Nov. 28.
Apple has a similar feature built into Notes. To access it, open Notes on your iPhone, tap the camera button, and start scanning. It works fairly well though it’s somewhat unnecessarily tied to Notes — I’d prefer if you could just scan documents directly into your Photos storage. If you prefer to keep your scanned document in Google Drive, then Google’s new scanning option might be better for you.
