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Scan documents to PDF with your iPhone, iPad or Mac

PDFlick finds the page inside the camera frame, straightens it, and cleans it up into something that reads like a document rather than a photo of one. On the Mac it goes further: pair an iPhone over Wi-Fi and the Mac shows the phone's viewfinder live while pages land in the review as you shoot them.

Coming Soon iOS 26.2 or later · iPadOS 26.2 or later · macOS 26.2 or later

Also searched as: document scanner · scan to PDF · camera to PDF · iPhone scanner for Mac

How to scan documents to PDF with your iPhone, iPad or Mac

On iPhone & iPad

Tap Scan to PDF and point the camera at the page.
PDFlick detects the document edges — hold steady, or turn on auto-capture to shoot when the page settles.
Adjust the crop corners if the detection missed, and pick a filter: colour, greyscale or high-contrast black and white.
Keep shooting to add pages, then tap Save. Run OCR afterwards to make the scan searchable.

On Mac (using your iPhone)

Open Scan on the Mac and put both devices on the same Wi-Fi network.
Pick your iPhone from the list of nearby devices and accept the connection when the Mac asks.
The Mac mirrors the phone's viewfinder — frame the page on the big screen and capture.
Pages arrive in the Mac review as you shoot. Crop, filter and save when the stack is complete.

What makes it different

Auto-capture is off by default and waits for the page to be genuinely still, so it will not fire mid-slide while you are still positioning paper.
Scan filters are tuned to keep a shadowed page readable rather than crushing the dark side to solid black.
The Mac names the connecting device and requires a manual accept for every session — it will never pair silently.
Live preview streams at 6 fps, enough to frame a page without saturating the network.

Scan to PDF — questions

Do I need an Apple Account or iCloud to use my iPhone as the Mac's scanner?

No. The devices connect directly over your local network using MultipeerConnectivity. No Apple Account, no iCloud, no relay server and no cable are involved.

Can I search the text in a scan afterwards?

Yes — run OCR / Searchable on the saved file. Apple's Vision framework recognizes the text on device and adds a searchable layer under the image.

Why does my scan look washed out or too dark?

Switch filters. Colour keeps the original tones, greyscale evens out lighting, and high-contrast black and white is best for plain printed text. The filters deliberately preserve detail in shadowed halves of a page.

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