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Scan to PDF
Use your phone camera as a scanner. Free, no sign-up.
How to scan a document to PDF
Your phone camera becomes a document scanner, and the pages become a PDF without leaving the browser.
- Allow camera access. Your browser asks first; the video never leaves your device.
- Capture each page. Take one photo per page, retaking any that came out badly.
- Save as PDF. All captured pages become a single document.
What the camera does, and what it leaves to you
The tool asks your browser for the rear camera at 2560 × 1440 where the device can provide it, and every capture is the video frame drawn straight onto a canvas and encoded as JPEG at 92% quality. There is no edge detection, no perspective correction and no contrast stretching: what the lens saw is what the page contains. Captures become pages in the order shown, one photo per page, and any of them can be reordered or removed before you build the file.
Opening a camera needs HTTPS and your permission. Where either is missing — a desktop with no camera, a declined prompt, a page served over plain HTTP — the tool offers to pick photos already on the device instead, and those make exactly the same PDF. Anything that is not already PNG or JPEG is re-encoded through a canvas first, which only works if the browser can decode it: Safari reads HEIC, most others do not, and a file this browser cannot open is named in a message rather than quietly dropped.
Getting a scan worth keeping
Resolution is the limit worth understanding. A4 is 8.3 inches across, so a page filling the short side of a 1440-pixel frame works out at roughly 170 pixels per inch — fine for ordinary printed text, marginal for small print and faint till receipts, and well under the 300 a flatbed gives you. Fill the frame with the paper, hold the phone parallel to the page rather than leaning over it, and light it from the side so your own hand casts no shadow. Each page is then made exactly as big as its photo is in pixels, one pixel to one point, so the pages are nominally huge; viewers and printers scale them to fit.
What comes out is a stack of photographs, so none of it is text yet. OCR PDF puts a searchable layer behind each image, and Deskew PDF straightens pages shot at an angle — worth doing first, because recognition is better on straight rows of text. Camera JPEGs are not small, so Compress PDF before emailing a long scan.
Questions
Can I make the scan searchable?
Yes — run the resulting file through OCR PDF and the text becomes selectable and searchable.
Why can I not turn the camera on?
Three usual reasons: the page is not on HTTPS, since browsers only expose a camera on a secure page; the permission prompt was declined; or the device has no camera. The tool says which it hit and offers the add-photos route, which produces exactly the same PDF.
Does it detect the page edges and fix the perspective, like a scanner app?
No. Each capture is the whole camera frame, unaltered, so you frame the page yourself. If a page came out tilted, straighten it afterwards with Deskew PDF; if there is too much desk around the paper, Crop PDF trims the same margin off every page.
Can I add more pages after I have downloaded the PDF?
Not in the same session — building the file ends it, and the only thing left is to start a new scan. Before you build you can add photos, reorder them and remove any you want to retake. Afterwards, Insert pages or Merge PDF will add more.
Are my files uploaded to a server?
No. Every tool on this site runs inside your browser, using the same engine as the Folia desktop app. Your file is read from your disk into your browser’s memory, processed there, and handed back as a download. It never crosses the internet, so there is nothing for us to store, leak or hand over.
Is there a file size limit?
We impose none. The only ceiling is your own device’s memory, which differs from one computer to another — so we read what your browser reports about this machine and show the resulting limit on the page. Light tools like merge and rotate handle far more than heavy ones like OCR, which must render every page. For anything larger, Folia for Desktop has no limit at all.
Is it really free? Do I need an account?
Yes, and no. Every tool is free and unlimited, with no watermark and no sign-up. Ads pay for the site, and your own computer does the work, which costs us nothing. Signing in with a paid Folia plan simply removes the ads.