Free document tools that never upload your files
Turn phone photos into clean scans and sign PDFs without printing anything. Passports, forms and signed agreements stay on your device.
Photograph a page and turn it into a clean document, or sign a PDF without printing it — both entirely in your browser. The photography decides the quality; the processing only cleans up what you captured. Even, indirect light matters more than any setting in the tool.
- Scan DocumentTurn a phone photo into a clean, flat scan
- Sign PDFDraw or type a signature and place it on the page
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Getting a usable scan from a phone
The photograph decides everything. Even, indirect light beats a lamp, which puts a bright hotspot in the middle of the page that no amount of processing removes cleanly. Window light on an overcast day is close to ideal.
Shoot square-on rather than at an angle, keep the page flat, and fill the frame. A page photographed at a slant has genuinely fewer pixels along its far edge, and cropping a distant shot throws away detail you already had.
Institutions reject scans for a predictable handful of reasons: an edge falling outside the frame, text running diagonally, a flash reflection over the print, or pages sent as separate images when one PDF was required.
Signing without printing
For almost everything short of a deed, a visible signature mark is what is being asked for — the same thing a printed and scanned page provides, since that is itself just an image of your signature on a document.
Drawing with a finger on a phone looks like your real signature; a mouse-drawn one rarely does, which is why typing your name in a script face is usually the better desktop option. Neither carries more weight than the other.
What this does not do is issue a cryptographic digital signature. No certificate is embedded and later tampering is not detected. Where an agreement specifically requires one, use a certificate authority.
Why these files should not leave your device
Scanning and signing are the two operations where the file is almost guaranteed to be sensitive: passports, driving licences, bank statements, medical letters, tax paperwork, signed contracts.
Every popular scanner app uploads those to a server, and many keep them in a cloud account by default. Doing the work in the browser means the photographs never leave the phone that took them, so there is no account holding your passport and no policy to read.
Common questions
Can a phone camera replace a scanner?
For most practical purposes, yes — a modern phone captures far more resolution than a flatbed scanner needs. What separates a photo from a scan is even lighting and a square-on angle, and the tool corrects the tonal range rather than the geometry.
Do my documents get uploaded?
No. Both tools run inside the browser tab and write their results to your device. Given that these are typically identity and financial documents, that is the point rather than a detail.
Is a signature added this way legally binding?
It is an image-based electronic signature, which for everyday agreements is generally treated like a printed and scanned page. Deeds, wills and regulated filings have stricter rules. This is general information rather than legal advice.
Can I scan several pages into one PDF?
Yes. Add every page at once, put them in order, and choose the single-PDF output. Keep the lighting and the setting consistent so the document reads as one scan rather than an assembly.
Will the scan be searchable?
No — the output is an image of the page, which is also true of a flatbed scanner. Making the text searchable requires OCR, which is a separate operation.
Should I use greyscale or black and white?
Greyscale for almost everything. Black and white gives the sharpest text and the smallest file but discards every mid-tone, so faint pencil, light highlighter and any photograph on the page disappear entirely.