Every now and then I scan documents with my smartphone. Invoices, receipts, notes, everything you accumulate in everyday life. I have been doing this for quite some time with the Android app OSS Document Scanner, an open-source alternative that works completely on the device. And the app is now also available as an iOS variant.
The concept is simple. The app turns your smartphone into a document scanner, with automatic edge detection, perspective correction, and OCR. Everything runs locally. No cloud, no account, no data sharing.
What the App Can Do
The feature list is extensive. You can scan documents with the camera or import images from the gallery. The app automatically detects the edges of the document and corrects the perspective.
After scanning, you can improve the quality. There are filters for color or black-and-white, you can edit the crop, rearrange pages, rotate them, and adjust the brightness.
For organization, there are folders with colors, sorting functions, and the ability to rename documents.
Export is done as PDF, JPEG, or PNG. You can share the files or save them directly on the device.
And then there is OCR. The app uses Tesseract models that work offline. You download the language files once and can then extract text from your scans and add it to the PDF. The generated PDFs are then searchable.
Privacy and Offline Function
This is the decisive point for me. OSS Document Scanner works completely offline. The app has no cloud lock-in. However, you can optionally set up synchronization via WebDAV, for example with your own Nextcloud instance.
The app is available on Android and iOS. It can be found in the Google Play Store, in the F-Droid Store, and on GitHub.
How the App Stands Out from the Competition
Compared to CamScanner or similar apps, OSS Document Scanner is leaner and has better filters.
The app is released under the MIT license. The source code can be viewed on GitHub. The project is actively developed; the last version at the time of this article is from September 2026.
Conclusion
OSS Document Scanner is a solid alternative for anyone who wants to scan documents without giving their data to someone else’s cloud. The app does what it is supposed to do and can optionally be synchronized with your own server via WebDAV. For me, that is exactly the right approach.
Download
OSS Document Scanner is available as open-source software.