FOSS scanner app surpasses Microsoft for usability
FOSS scanner app surpasses Microsoft for usability
A Personal Journey Through Enshittification
As an important part of my work I often need to scan paper documents, and then use those pdf documents generated to update records or often reprint copies of the same documents. Using a full size document scanner/copier is often not an option or is just plain inconvenient compared with the quick availability of cell phone scanning. For anyone who is used cell phone scanning at any sort of professional scale, you know that it is often finicky. White documents come out gray, stray shadows ruin the contrast on half the page, text and images alongside each other Turn out to be difficult to optimize.
Enter Microsoft Office Lens. This was a great little app that has excellent filters making it easy to fix shadows and white balance in a snap (or rather a tap). However, in order to use all the features, Microsoft began nudging users toward Microsoft Office Mobile. For example, did you want to view or edit those scanned PDFs? Better get another app to connect your other Microsoft apps. Congratulations, you now have multiple redundant apps! Office Mobile replaced the Lens Scanner on my device.
Microsoft Office Mobile was itself discontinued in 2023 in favor of Microsoft 365 (Office). This brought the same functionality while also pushing other niche Microsoft apps (like OneNote). In the latest update, I was horrified (but hardly surprised) to see that the latest app is little more than a platform to launch Microsoft Copilot, their AI assistant that the company has clearly gone all-in with. Mind you, there is already a Bing App, a Microsoft Launcher, Edge Web Browser, and a dedicated Copilot App, all shilling the Microsoft AI front and center.
A Light at the End of the Tunnel
It's at this time that I decide to re-evaluate an App I had tried months ago: OSS Document Scanner. When I first experimented with making the switch, I found that it lacked the image processing, text recognition, and ease of use I needed to really replace what at the time was still a very usable non-free app.
When I checked in on the project, I was blown away! This was not the juvenile scanning app I tried to test-drive before. Here instead was a fully functioning, powerful, and user-focused app. It is able to quickly and accurately detect document edges, scan multiple pages in a row, detect text (with a simple in-app download), and crucially, to automagically white balance each page for clear, readable, and printable results. Saving and exporting is a cinch too.
If I sound overly excited, that's probably true. This was a frequent pain point in my day to day work. I prefer to use FOSS apps whenever it makes sense to do so. There are many tasks in my life that are simply not easily replicated by FOSS software, so when I find one that is actually better than the non-free options out there, it really makes my day and I want to share it. If you ever use your phone to scan documents, check out this app, or share with a coworker:
GitHub | Play Store | IzzyOnDroid | iOS
Thanks for sharing.
All too often the free and open alternatives (or these days even just the non-subscription alternatives!) involve compromising some features or convenience.
But not always.
This was 100% the case 10 year ago.
These days, ymmv.
For example, 10 years ago, QGIS was kind-of a joke. If you werent using ESRI you were fucked.
Now, the ESRI products are so full of anti-features, I would never consider using them, meanwhile, QGIS has improved to be basically the industry standard.
Oh this is nice to hear, I had to switch to Arcpro at work and I don't like it. I have been putting off checking the qgis I have on my personal computer so I'll have to see what's up.
I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that most of the FOSS alternatives I’ve discovered in the last 12-18 months have been just as good if not better than paid alternatives. The issue they face mostly is lack of visibility. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I discovered Beat for screenplay writing for the first time.
edited to include a link
I agree. I've been trying to move towards open source software for ideological reasons, and I'm astounded by how much my quality of life has been improved. I end up sounding like an evangelist for software that I love because I'm so shocked it's not more well known.
Glad you found a better solution. At home, I scan every letter I get, getting me to 99% paperless. Imagine my shock, when I doscovered that Gnome's "Simple Scan" took sharper scans at one tenth the filesize than "HP Smart Print".... on my HP printer. No login bullshit, no "oh, we analyze your scan for content to suggest a file name", no nothing. Just the possibility to click a button, and get a great looking pdf at a ver decent file size.
"analyse your scan for content to suggest a file name"
That's a 'Yikes' from me
Although it’s rare now, it’s nice to come across apps that do something very well that haven’t followed the standard big tech path of mega enshittification. Sounds like this one was decent a while back (but maybe lacked features), and then - holy shit - actually improved over time.
Good post - my heart is warmed.
You can also use Obtainium to automatically check for new builds on GitHub and install them, so you can get it directly from there without worrying about the Play Store
I only wish it had better discoverability. If you know the exact app you want it's phenomenal. If you want to search, you need an app that searches repos (F-Droid, NeoStore, Droidify, etc.). Even Aurora Store has some big advantages over the official Play Store, although is is effectively just a front-end.
Nice. Might replace FDroid with this.
All of Microsoft's apps feel increasingly unwieldy and sluggish. Remember when they put an entire webbrowser in their "Math"/calculator app?
Surpassing MS in usability is a low bar though.
Thanks for sharing both story and suggestion! Downloaded this now :)
Darn, for a minute there I thought this app might allow you to add pages to rearrange pages in existing documents like Notebloc. So few scanner apps offer this, but it's super useful.
Edit: BTW I was talking about Android, plus if you read the comment chain below, this one does! Just long press the page number icon and drag to move.
NAPS2 may be what you are looking for
Thanks, that does look nifty, but unfortunately I was thinking specifically for Android.
If you're strictly talking pdfs then there is the almighty StirlingPDF: https://stirlingtools.com/. This is a self-hosted tool, but the feature set of it is out of this world. Here's a picture of all the features :D
I am currently a happy user of Notebloc Scanner (proprietary, one time $5 fee to remove ads), but I'll go give this a look.
Re: cell phone scanning. I've seen these camera based book scanners popping up recently. I've never used one so I can't comment on how good they are, but when I read your workflow it occured to me it was worth mentioning. Here's a search result I arbitrarily picked listing some.
https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/buying-guides/best-book-scanner#section-best-overall
I have a cheap no brand of this and while the camera quality is not as good as a phone, it's pretty convenient and faster for bulk scanning.
Neat! I use an app to avoid the inconvenience of clunky equipment, so this wouldn't help my situation, but definitely very cool! I would have put this to good use when I was in school!
OP I think you're on Android as I am because you mentioned ms launcher.
I just gave it a go but it keeps on timing out (just keeps rotating) every second or third document especially in multi-page.
I'm wondering if it's specific to my hardware or are you experiencing anything similar? Assuming not with your glowing review.
Thanks! I was using vFlat, but they started charging a subscription to export as pdf. The app was great up until that point.
Checked out the App, So much better than the Office Lens
I haven't used Lens in a long time, will check this out since the enshitification reached it.