If your home office is overflowing with papers, digitizing them isn’t as daunting a task as you might have thought. You don’t need a big flatbed scanner or expensive software – all you need is your smartphone and Google Drive for Android or iOS.
Load up Google Drive, point your phone’s camera at a document, and you can convert it to a PDF that can be stored securely in the cloud and can be sorted and searched like any other file in Google Drive. You can remove your paper folders, and maybe even entire filing cabinets, for a neater, more organized physical space.
There are other apps that can do this, including Dropbox and the Apple Notes app, but we’ll focus on Google Drive here. It’s available on the web and for all phones and tablets (and comes pre-installed on most Android devices), links seamlessly with other Google apps and services, and includes a variety of useful file management tools.
Scanning your documents
All you really need to do in preparation here is install Google Drive on your phone, stack and prepare your documents, and find a flat surface to scan them. Google Drive can compensate to some extent for documents scanned at an angle or in variable lighting, but for best results you need a clean, flat, well-lit space.
Open Google Drive on Android and you will see a + Down (plus) button in the bottom right corner: Tap this and then Scan for a start. In Google Drive for iOS, a B (plus) button also appears, but then you must choose Scan document. Then you will see that your device’s camera is activated and the main scanning interface appears.
The scanning process works slightly differently depending on your device. On Android, auto-scan should be on by default – just point your phone’s camera at a document and it should be recognized and scanned. Continue scanning additional pages as needed, then tap the right arrow (bottom right). Tap the main shutter button in the center to turn auto scanning on or off, and the image icon on the left to choose a page from your phone’s gallery.
If you’re on iOS, auto-scan should also be enabled, so just point your phone’s camera at a page to have it recognized and captured: Tap the Car (top right) to change it to Manualwhere you have to press the shutter button every time (tap the button again to go back to Car). Continue scanning pages in the same way until you are ready to save the entire document, then click Save.
The next screen you see also varies by platform. Basically, iOS only allows you to choose a file name and a folder in your Google Drive, while on Android you can apply various enhancements or filters to your pages, recover individual pages if necessary and crop or rotate pages, and then you can tap Next to choose a file name and folder.
Managing your documents
Once you’ve scanned your pages, choose your file name, choose a Google Drive folder, tap the Upload button and you’ll find the document transferred to cloud storage. That means it’s available through Google Drive on any phone or tablet you’re signed in on and through Google Drive on the web.
There are several ways to manage files in Google Drive, most easily done through the web interface. Right-click on a document and you can find options to download, rename and copy it, as well as share it with others. Choose Organize from this submenu and you will be able to place the file in a specific folder.
Everything you scan through the Google Drive mobile app will be saved as a PDF. These types of files can be searched in Google Drive: enter your query in the search box and in the results you will see PDF files with the specified text included.
Double-click a scanned PDF on the web page and it will open in full screen. From this interface you can print or download the file and choose Open with Google Docs. This means that Google Drive will try to convert the PDF into an editable document, preserving fonts and layouts as much as possible. You will then be able to edit and work on this file online without affecting the original PDF.
PDF files don’t take up much space in the cloud, but Google only gives you 15 GB of free space in Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Drive. If you need more space to store your scanned documents, you should sign up for a Google One plan – pricing starts at $2 per month for an additional 100GB of space.
PopSci Outdoor Gift Guide 2025