‘Scannable’ Scanner App for iOS 8 a Must-Have for Evernote Fans

During the past month, I went from Evernote skeptic to convert. I didn’t care for Evernote’s interface (I still don’t love it) and had preferred Springpad. This Evernote competitor, however, went belly up in May 2014. So I finally took the Evernote plunge. I’m glad I did.

One of the best things about Evernote, a Web- and app-based online notebook and clipping tool, is the growing ecosystem of apps that make it even more useful. Scannable, a free, new iOS 8-only app from Evernote, is a perfect example of an app that complements Evernote.

Yes, about 6 trillion scanning apps are already available, many for free or at low costs. Scanner Pro ($3) is a particularly good one, though, and it lets you passcode-protect documents and use Apple’s Touch ID for authentication to avoid passwords. (For Android users, the free Google Drive app is a decent a portable scanner, and CamScanner is another good, free option.)

Back to Scannable. The app scans documents, magazine articles, business cards, receipts and other paper documents quickly and accurately. Then it runs them through the OCR (optical character recognition) machine, so you can keyword-search scanned docs in the future.

To initiate a scan, you just aim your iPhone or iPad camera at a document. Scannable works very well, even with less-than-ideal lighting conditions. Scanning multiple-page documents into one file is easy, too. The app crashed on a few occasions while midway through scans of multi-page docs, but scan quality was good overall, and I only had to rescan a page once.

You can opt to automatically save your scans to Evernote as new notes, which is another valuable feature. Not an Evernote user? Not a problem. You can export your scanned docs to email, text message, the Camera Roll or as a PDF, among other options. It’s also worth mentioning that the Evernote app for iOS also lets you scan documents. Scannable is better, though, in my experience. For one thing, Scannable adjusts to lighting conditions automatically so you don’t have to.

That’s a lot to like, but Scannable might not serve all of your scanning needs. If you need to scan and sign documents on the go, Scannable isn’t the app for you — unless you also download SignEasy, a freemium document signing app for iOS and Android, which I have used and recommend. When using Scannable, you can opt to open your scanned document in SignEasy and add signatures there. 

If you want a quick, easy, free scanner app for your iOS 8 smartphone or tablet, Scannable is worth a download, especially if you’re already an Evernote enthusiast.