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. Below are the two catches, then the options that save a scan straight to your phone, including Textora, which also exports searchable PDF and Word files.

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

The first three 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.

Those built-ins stop at the file or the clipboard. Textora picks up the rest of what Lens did, without a Microsoft account. It scans multi-page documents with edge detection and perspective correction, and saves the scanned PDF to Files in one tap, On My iPhone or in iCloud Drive. It exports a searchable PDF (the text sits under the scanned image), or the text as Word (.docx), TXT or Markdown, and it can merge, rotate and delete PDF pages on the device. Text recognition runs on the iPhone, so the photo isn’t uploaded to read it, and everything you scan stays in a searchable history. It’s free to download and runs on iPhone and iPad.

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 separate workflow.

Textora builds read-aloud into the scan: any text it recognises can be spoken aloud on the device, straight after you scan. It isn’t Immersive Reader, but it puts scanning and listening back in one place.

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 a plain file on the phone. Textora if you want the file on the phone plus searchable text, Word export and read-aloud.

I build Textora. Facts about Microsoft’s dates and OneDrive’s behaviour above are quoted from Microsoft’s own pages, checked on August 7, 2026; email support@textora.app if something has changed.

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