Scanner apps — QR, barcode and document scanning

Scan documents to crisp PDFs — no watermark, no cloud

CamScanner made phone scanning popular — and then made it annoying: watermarks on free output, subscription prompts on every export, and pages synced to a cloud you never asked for. A scan of your ID, a contract or a medical report should not live on someone else's server as the price of a "free" app.

The Document Scanner in the Carbide app does the same core job without the catches. Point the camera at a page and it finds the edges, crops away the desk, straightens the perspective and lifts the contrast, so the result reads like a scan rather than a photo. The output is a clean PDF, processed and stored on your phone.

• No watermark on the output — free means free.
• No subscription nagging, no locked exports.
• Nothing uploaded — pages are processed and saved on the device.

How to scan a document to PDF with your phone

Scanning to PDF takes under a minute, and the flow is the same for a single receipt or a ten-page contract:

• Open Document Scanner and hold the phone over the page — the edges are detected automatically.
• Capture. The page is auto-cropped, straightened and cleaned up.
• Add more pages the same way, or retake any that came out blurry.
• Save. You get one PDF, stored in the Carbide folder on your phone and ready to share.

Scan any QR code — why an app beats the stock camera

Your phone's camera can read a QR code, so why install anything? Two reasons: history and control. The stock camera reads a code, flashes a notification and hands the link straight to your browser — no record of what you scanned, and no pause to check where the link actually points before it opens.

The QR Scanner in the Carbide app shows the decoded content first — link, Wi-Fi network or plain text — so you decide what happens next, and it keeps a scan history on your device, so last week's Wi-Fi code or menu link is still there when you need it again. Scanning works offline, with no ad breaks between scans. For the other direction — making codes instead of reading them — the QR Generator runs free in your browser, and the codes it creates are static, so they never expire. The QR codes guide covers both directions.

Barcode scanning and product lookup — without a shopping profile

Most barcode apps are shopping apps in disguise: they want an account, a location and a purchase history so your scans can feed a profile. The Barcode Scanner in the Carbide app is a utility instead — scan a product's barcode and see what it is, with no sign-up and no shopping profile built behind your back.

It reads the formats that matter on real shelves — EAN-13, UPC-A and Code 128 — and the scanning itself works offline. Looking a product up does need a connection: the lookup sends the barcode number, and only the number, to fetch what it identifies. One honest limit: this is identification, not a price-comparison engine. If you want deal-hunting across ten retailers, a dedicated shopping app does that; if you want to know what is in the box without becoming the product yourself, this is the right tool.

Multi-page scans into one PDF, saved on your phone

A contract is rarely one page, so multi-page capture is built in: keep photographing pages and the Document Scanner collects them, in order, into a single PDF. Files land in a Carbide folder in your phone's storage — plain files you can open, move, back up or attach like anything else, not entries trapped inside an app's private library.

And because scans are ordinary PDFs, the web toolkit can take over from there today: Merge PDF combines separate scans into one document without uploading them, Split PDF pulls out just the pages you need, and Image to PDF turns photos already in your gallery into a tidy PDF right in the browser. To make a scan's text editable, Image to Text extracts it with OCR — the extract-text guide shows the exact steps.

One toolkit app instead of three ad-farms

Search any app store for "scanner" and the pattern repeats: single-purpose apps, free to install, then filled with full-screen ads, tracking SDKs and permission requests that have nothing to do with scanning. Installing one app for QR codes, another for barcodes and a third for documents means three sets of ads and three companies holding your scans.

Carbide's answer is one app where the scanners sit next to the calculators, converters and PDF tools — one install, one camera permission used for the obvious purpose, and scan history that stays on the device. The app is coming soon for Android and iPhone; the Document Scanner, QR Scanner and Barcode Scanner pages show what is on the way, and the web tools above work today, free, in the browser you already have.

Frequently asked questions