How to Scan on Samsung Phones: A Complete Guide (2026)

Your Samsung phone can scan a lot more than just QR codes. You can digitise receipts, scan tax documents, extract text out of a scanned image, export them into a PDF file and do much more. And these tools are baked into One UI, but most users don't know where they live. In this guide, I will walk you through every scanning method on Samsung phones in 2026. On that note, let's go ahead and learn how to scan on Samsung phones.

Scan Documents Using Camera App on Samsung Phones

You don't need a scanner app to scan documents on your Samsung phone. The built-in Camera app can automatically detect and produce clean scanned images from documents. Here is how to use it.

1. Open the Camera app and point the camera at the document.
2. The Camera app will automatically detect the document, and a yellow box will appear around the edges.
3. Tap on the Text icon at the bottom right.
4. Next, hit the Scan button and you can adjust the perspective crop.

5. Now, tap on Save and the scanned image is saved to the Gallery app. It will create a flattened image with corrected perspective.

Scan Multiple Documents Using the Samsung Notes App

While the built-in Camera app is good for single-page image scans, if you want to scan multiple pages and create a PDF file, Samsung's Notes app is a great solution. Here is how it works.

1. Open the Samsung Notes app and tap on the Compose icon at the bottom right.
2. Here, tap on the + button from the top and choose Scan.

3. Now, point the camera at the document and keep taking images of multiple documents and pages.
4. Once you are done, tap on Save and all the scanned images will be saved inside the Notes app.

5. To export the file as PDF or image, tap on the 3-dots icon at the top right and choose Save as file.
6. Here, choose PDF file, Image file or your preferred document format.
7. You can now save the multi-page scanned document on your Samsung phone.

Scan Text from Images on Samsung Phones

Besides scanning images, you can also extract text from photos seamlessly on Samsung phones. The built-in Gallery app is great for extracting text from scanned images. Here is how you do it.

1. Launch the Gallery app and open an image with text.
2. Here, tap on the T icon at the bottom right. The Gallery app will highlight all detectable text.
3. Now, you can easily select and copy the text from scanned images.
4. You can also tap on the Scan button and create a flat and clean scanned image.

Scan QR Codes on Samsung Phones

Samsung phones come with a built-in QR code scanner, and you can use it from the Quick Settings panel. Here's how to do it:

1. Launch the Quick Settings panel by swiping down twice on the home screen.
2. Here, tap on the Scan QR code tile.
3. Now, point the phone at the QR code you want to scan.
4. The scanner will read it and show a card with a link or a suggested action.

Besides this, every Android device, including Samsung phones, also comes with the Google Lens app, and it's one of the best ways to scan QR codes on Android phones. You can use Google Lens to scan a plethora of things, and it's quite fast and accessible. Here is how it works.

1. Tap on the Google Lens icon from the Google Search bar or Google app.
2. Now, you can scan a QR code, document, extract text or choose to translate the document right from the viewfinder.

And that is how you scan documents, pages and QR codes on your Samsung phone. For a clean scanned image, I would recommend placing documents on a flat surface without any overhead light to get the best results. And all these features are free and built into One UI. You do not need any third-party app for scanning, text extraction (OCR) or QR code scanning.