While going paperless is the dream for some, it’s probably not going to happen for a long time. Most people still have to print to get computer documents in a physical form, and scan to get physically documents on their PC.
The good news is that you don’t need any hardware other than your smartphone to scan these days. You can actually scan documents with nothing more than your Android phone — here’s how.
Get started by opening the Google Drive app on your Android phone. Tap the floating + button in the bottom-right corner and choose Scan. The app will launch your camera and you can snap a photo of whatever you’d like to scan.
You can also adjust these after you’ve taken them. Once the picture is taken, press the crop symbol to cut out unnecessary parts of the image, the refresh button to try that one again, or the plus button to add another page to scan. Once everything is complete, press the check mark and the scans will be uploaded to Google Drive for you to access.
If you scan often, you can even make a shortcut on your home screen for easy access. Long-press on some blank space on your phone’s home screen and tap Widgets. Scroll down to Drive and drag the Drive scan widget to a convenient place. Once it’s placed, you’ll need to choose a folder to save scans into. Then you’re ready to go — tap that icon and get scanning!
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