Microsoft Lens Is Gone. OneDrive's Scanner Works, but Not the Way You'd Expect

Microsoft Lens is finished. The retirement notice lays out three dates:

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.

You can continue to scan documents in the app until March 9, 2026. After that, you will not be able to create new scans, but you will still be able to access your previous scans if the app remains installed on your device.

So the app on your phone still opens and still shows your old scans. It just won’t make new ones. Microsoft’s recommendation for what to do instead is one sentence:

To continue using scanning capabilities, we recommend the OneDrive app, which includes a built-in scanning feature.

That’s true. It’s also incomplete in a way that has been quietly annoying people for months.

The menu decides the file type

On May 31, 2026, a user named Janene Boracci posted a question titled “Mad about Microsoft lens” on Microsoft’s own Q&A site:

Microsoft lens was my go-to software for all of my documentation. Now that I can’t use it and I’m forced to make my documents jpegs there’s no way to convert them to the type of document I want it to be. So what do I do?

The thread got two answers. The useful one came from an independent advisor and it’s worth knowing before you scan anything:

In OneDrive, scanning from the Photos menu saves a JPEG. Scanning from the Files menu saves a PDF.

That’s the whole trick. There’s no format setting to change, no preference buried in Settings. The entry point you tap determines what comes out. If you go in through Photos because scanning feels like a camera action, you get an image file, and then you’re stuck trying to convert a JPEG into a document.

Microsoft’s retirement page doesn’t mention this. Neither does the in-app prompt pushing you toward OneDrive. It’s the single most useful thing to know about the transition and you have to find it in a support forum.

What OneDrive won’t do at all

This one is on Microsoft’s own page, stated without hedging:

OneDrive does not support saving scans locally on your device.

Your scan goes to your OneDrive account. That’s the design, not a bug. If you want the file sitting on the phone itself, you scan, then download it back down.

For a lot of people this is fine. For some it isn’t, and it’s worth being honest about which group you’re in:

• You’re fine if you already live in OneDrive, scan things you want backed up anyway, and have reliable connectivity.
• You’re not fine if you scan documents you’d rather not put in cloud storage, work somewhere with poor signal, or don’t want a Microsoft account at all.

Lens didn’t require a sign-in for basic scanning. OneDrive does, because scanning is a feature inside a storage product rather than a standalone tool. That’s the change most former Lens users notice first, and it’s the one no workaround fixes.

If you want a scan that stays on your phone

Two of these are free and already installed.

The Files app scanner. Open Files, tap the three-dot menu, choose Scan Documents. It saves a PDF wherever you point it, including On My iPhone. No account, no upload.

The Preview app, iOS 26 and later. Same idea with a better interface, and it handles multi-page documents cleanly. Also free, also local.

Notes. Scan into a note. Fine for quick captures, awkward if you want the file somewhere specific.

For pulling text out of a scan rather than producing a document, Live Text does it free and on-device: long-press the text in the image and copy it.

I build Textora, a free OCR app, so weigh this accordingly: it’s aimed at the text-extraction half of what Lens did, with batch scanning, a searchable history, and on-device processing with no account. What it does not do is produce the flattened, OCR-layered PDF that Lens exported to Word and OneNote. If your Lens workflow ended in an editable Word document, Textora is not the replacement for that specific step, and I’d rather you knew now. Microsoft’s own suggestion of scanning to PDF and opening it in Word is closer to what you had.

The part nobody replaced

Lens included read-aloud through Immersive Reader, which mattered to users with low vision and to people with dyslexia. Neither OneDrive’s scanner nor the built-in iOS scanners carry that forward as an integrated feature. iOS has its own accessibility tooling that covers some of it, but it’s a different workflow rather than a drop-in substitute.

If that was the reason you used Lens, none of the recommendations above are a real answer, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise.

What to do this week

If you still have Lens installed with scans in it, open it and get them out. Microsoft says old scans stay accessible while the app remains installed — that’s a guarantee about the app, not about your phone. An OS update or an accidental delete ends it, and there’s no reinstalling a retired app.

After that, pick based on where you want files to land. OneDrive if you want them in the cloud, and remember to start from the Files menu. The Files or Preview scanner if you want them on the phone.

I build Textora, a free on-device OCR app. Every claim about Microsoft’s dates and OneDrive’s behaviour above is quoted from Microsoft’s own pages, linked inline. I’ve named the case where Microsoft’s own suggestion beats my app. If something here is out of date, email support@textora.app and I’ll fix the post and say what changed.

Sources: Microsoft Lens retirement notice · Microsoft Q&A thread, May 31, 2026