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Scanner Pro for iPhone and iPad gets redesign, auto OCR, pivot to freemium

The popular Scanner Pro iOS app from Readdle is out with a notable update. It brings a really useful automated OCR feature, a fresh modern design including a new list view and sorting options, as well as changing to a freemium model so you can try it out for free before deciding to upgrade to get the full feature set.

Readdle updated Scanner Pro for iPhone and iPad yesterday and alongside a new modern design, the major new feature is the auto OCR that Readdle calls “Text Vision.” OCR is a standard feature for more expensive scanner/PDF readers on for desktops but this is a great feature to see come to iPhone and iPad.

With Text Vision, Scanner Pro automatically understands the text on your scans, making it searchable and selectable.

When you open a document, there’s a new Text tab that shows your scan as text, so you can read, select, and copy it. Maybe you’d like to share a paragraph from a textbook to your note-taking app or copy names or number from scanned receipts. Just give it a try!

As for the new design, Scanner Pro 8.0 brings over a dozen changes to make it more seamless to navigate and organize your files. These include:

  • New List view
  • Faster access to search and folder creation
  • More sorting options: scan by name, date created, date modified

Finally, Scanner Pro has moved to become a freemium app. You can test it out for free and if you like it and want to get the new OCR, watermark-free scans, full-text search and other advanced features, the app runs $19.99/year.

Scanner Pro free users get:

  • Best-in-class quality document scanning
  • Ability to freely share documents (albeit with a Scanner Pro watermark)
  • Sync between devices with iCloud

Scanner Pro Plus premium subscription ($19.99/year) adds:

  • Watermark free scans
  • Text Vision – on-device OCR in 26 languages
  • Full-text search both in Scanner Pro and in shared PDFs
  • Password protection for both the app and any shared PDF
  • Automatic upload to cloud and workflows

Also, if you happened to already buy the previous version, here’s what Readdle is doing for existing customers:

  1. You can still use all the features you had before without any limitations. They remain free for you forever.
  2. All the new Scanner Pro features added in version 8 and mentioned in this article are also free for you. These include the modern new design, Text Vision, and full-text search.
  3. However, some of the new capabilities we’re going to add in the future might require a subscription.  

Read more on the Readdle blog about how to use the new features.

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Avatar for Michael Potuck Michael Potuck

Michael is an editor for 9to5Mac. Since joining in 2016 he has written more than 3,000 articles including breaking news, reviews, and detailed comparisons and tutorials.