Skip to content
dialegein

Microsoft Lens

Retired Microsoft mobile scanner, replaced by the scanner in OneDrive.

Jobs OCR Convert

Discontinued

Microsoft Lens was retired in 2026. It was removed from the App Store and Google Play on 9 February 2026, support ended the same day, and new scans could not be created after 9 March 2026. Microsoft's suggested replacement is the scanner built into the OneDrive app — but note that OneDrive 'does not support saving scans locally on your device', so it is not a like-for-like swap for anyone who valued local scanning.

Where your files are processed

Where files are processed: not verified

We have not yet tested this tool.

Capture, editing and Gallery or local PDF saves happened on the device, but saving to OneDrive, OneNote, Word or PowerPoint required a Microsoft account and placed the file in Microsoft's cloud. The support page never said where text extraction ran.

What it does

Microsoft Lens was a free phone app for capturing documents, whiteboards, receipts, business cards and handwritten notes, straightening and filtering the images, and exporting them as PDF, Word or PowerPoint files or into OneNote and OneDrive. Its Actions modes extracted text, tables, contacts and QR codes, and it applied OCR so PDFs and Word files were searchable. It is no longer available.

Best for: Nobody for new use — the app can no longer be installed and new scans cannot be created. It is listed for reference and for the record of what replaced it.

Worth knowing: It is discontinued and unsupported. Microsoft's own replacement, OneDrive scanning, explicitly does not save scans locally on your device, so anyone who used Lens for local scanning loses that.

Details, and where each comes from

Vendor statements, our own reading of their pages, and the things nobody has established yet, each answered separately. Where we have not confirmed something it says so rather than guessing, and a row nobody has established is greyed out.

Versions covered
iOS · Android
Website
support.microsoft.com
Requires an account
Not verified
Watermark on the free tier
Not verified
Maximum file size
Not verified
Batch processing
Yes
Data residency
Multiple regions
Open source
No
Self-hostable
No
Licence
Not verified
Redaction
No redaction feature
Programmatic access
None
Last availability check
Responded in 142 ms 16 October 2026

Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.

What the redaction verdict rests on

From the vendor's own documentation, read 22 September 2026. Not tested by us.

What that does not establish: The vendor’s own site was read on 22 September 2026 and contains no mention of redaction, sanitisation, blackout or whiteout. Absence from a vendor’s own material is not proof that a feature does not exist — it may be undocumented, or on a page the reading did not reach — but for a NEGATIVE claim it is the strongest evidence available, and it is weaker than a positive quote. Recorded as such rather than presented as certainty.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lens/microsoft-lens-for-android

What the vendor says

Claims are labelled rather than repeated as fact. Where we have checked something ourselves, it says so and shows when. Checked means we read the vendor's own page and it says what we recorded — not that we tested the behaviour, unless the note says we did.

  • “The Microsoft Lens app will be retired from iOS and Android devices starting January 9, 2026, and will no longer be supported after February 9.”

    Checked by us — the source says this Read 22 September 2026

    Confirmed verbatim: the retirement notice carries the sentence exactly. The page then gives three dates rather than the two in the claim, and the third is the one a current user needs: scanning continues until March 9, 2026, after which no new scans can be created but previous scans remain accessible if the app stays installed. It also states that Lens will be removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store on February 9, 2026. So the claim is accurate and incomplete in a way that matters — a reader planning around "no longer supported after February 9" would want to know they can still scan until March 9. Note the claim is the same sentence as the OneDrive document-scanning entry verified in this batch; both were read from this one page.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lens/retirement-of-microsoft-lens
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    c2c1a45ccec3689a343a56498859d442e11f4caf7c311543701f39e86f34f4c4

    How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lens/retirement-of-microsoft-lens re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-support-microsoft-com-en-us-lens-retirement-of-microsoft-l-13d3cefe.txt.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

  • “When installed on Android devices with more than 3GB RAM, the latest version of Microsoft Lens lets you capture and import up to 100 images in a single scan for locally stored images and PDF files.”

    Checked by us — the source says this Read 22 September 2026

    Confirmed verbatim: the support page carries the sentence unaltered, including the 3GB threshold and the 100-image figure for locally stored images and PDF files. It is worth recording plainly that this is a capability limit rather than a retention statement, and that the ranking filed it here only because the sentence contains the words "locally stored". The claim as written is accurate to its source; the page adds that you can review each image as you take it or edit them later, and it does not say where the images go afterwards, which is the question the tier exists to answer and which this page does not address. Recorded as the vendor's description; no control was run.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lens/microsoft-lens-for-android
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    7a1da1597f3459578a1a5254086aa50980d7bd1012e45903ef23b0a0fa97ecfe

    How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lens/microsoft-lens-for-android re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-support-microsoft-com-en-us-lens-microsoft-lens-for-androi-97d0d355.txt.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

Each claim is quoted from the vendor's own pages. This section describes what we have and have not checked — it is not a judgement about anyone.

Sponsorship is distribution, not an endorsement or a promise of search rankings, AI citations, traffic, or sales. This listing is a free entry, compiled from published sources.

Visit Microsoft Lens Report a problem

How this record was put together

Editorial review.
No editor has signed this record off. That is not the same as nothing having been checked, and the lines below say what has.
Source reading.
2 claims taken from the vendor's own pages, read between 22 September 2026 and 22 September 2026.
Website availability.
The vendor's site was last checked on 16 October 2026.
Behaviour testing.
We have not run this tool ourselves, so everything here rests on the vendors’ own pages.

Sources: support.microsoft.com lens retirement page and Lens for Android page; microsoft.com/lens (now 404); Microsoft Store listing; Microsoft privacy statement.