Microsoft Lens
Retired Microsoft mobile scanner, replaced by the scanner in OneDrive.
Operated by Microsoft
Opens the vendor's own site.
Jobs covered
Open a task to see exactly what the vendor documentation supports.
OCR
Browse all ocr toolsrunning optical character recognition with Microsoft Lens, where the retired Android and iOS support pages document that if OCR is to be applied to a captured image the Word export option is selected, and Microsoft Lens then creates a Word file in the user's OneDrive account which automatically extracts all legible text found in the captured image; the Android page also documents an Actions mode with a Text sub-mode that extracts text from an image for copying or sharing after selecting the preferred text language from a menu, plus Table, Read using Immersive Reader, Contact and QR Code sub-modes, while the iOS page lists only the Whiteboard, Document, Business Card and Photo capture modes and has no Actions mode, and both pages say GCC accounts do not support Image to Text, Image to Table, Image to Word, Image to PPT, Business Card or Upload to OneNote; the pages do not state where recognition runs, so on-device versus cloud processing is not claimed, and no accuracy figures or supported-language counts are stated beyond the business-card note that it works best with English, German, Spanish or Simplified Chinese; the app was retired from iOS and Android on 9 January 2026, stopped being supported after 9 February 2026, and could not create new scans after 9 March 2026
Convert
Browse all convert toolsexporting and converting captures with Microsoft Lens, where the retired Android and iOS support pages document that captures made in Whiteboard, Document or Photo mode can be saved to the Gallery or Photo Library, saved as PDF files, or saved to Microsoft OneNote, OneDrive, Word or PowerPoint, and on iOS also sent through Microsoft Outlook or the Mail app; the Word export is the option that applies OCR and creates a Word file in OneDrive, and the iOS page says captured images saved as Word, PowerPoint or PDF files will be in the OneDrive Documents folder, that PDF files can also be saved locally on an iPhone or iPad, and that the resulting Word and PowerPoint documents are real Microsoft Office documents, with Word recognising handwritten, typed and printed text and the general layout of the capture; Business Card mode saves to OneNote as a vCard, and on Android a previously Lens-created PDF can be edited by adding images, editing existing images or reordering them; it is not a general PDF converter, does not convert arbitrary PDFs into Office formats, and the amount of text recognition in a Word or PowerPoint export is not documented as a guarantee; the app was retired from iOS and Android on 9 January 2026, stopped being supported after 9 February 2026, and could not create new scans after 9 March 2026
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. On Android its Actions modes extracted text, tables, contacts and QR codes and could read text aloud, while the iOS page lists only the capture modes and has no Actions mode.
Selecting the Word export applied OCR, creating a Word file in the user's OneDrive that extracted legible text. The app has been retired: new scans could not be created after 9 March 2026, and it was removed from the app stores and stopped being supported on 9 February 2026.
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
- Proprietary
- Redaction
- No redaction feature
- Programmatic access
- None
- Last availability check
- Responded in 40 ms 21 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.
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“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
- 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.
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“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
- 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.
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.
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