Google beefs up Drive’s document scanning feature and brings it to iPhone

Google beefs up Drive’s document scanning feature and brings it to iPhone

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google Drive users on iOS are getting a new scanning feature that lets them quickly photograph documents and add them to their libraries, the search giant has announced. The feature has been available for Android for over a decade, but until now iPhone and iPad users haven’t had the same option. Google has also upgraded the scanner in Drive’s Android app.

iPhone users in the US will also benefit from a new title suggestion feature that attempts to auto-generate a document title based on text it recognizes in the scan. The feature previously came to the Android version of Drive earlier this year. Google also says it’s improving document scanning on Android, adding similar features like the option to automatically capture documents when they’re in frame. 9to5Google spotted the rollout of this new Android interface last week.

Image: Google

The document scanning process on Android.

At this point, most of the major cloud storage providers now offer native scanning features to quickly capture documents using your phone’s camera. Microsoft launched its Office Lens (now Microsoft Lens) document scanning app in 2015, and Apple built a similar scanner into its Notes app in 2017.

Google says the new iOS features are rolling out now, and are already available on Android. Google’s scanner is accessible in the Drive app on iOS and Android either via the camera icon on the bottom right, or by tapping the “+” icon and selecting “Scan.”