From September, Microsoft will gradually abandon Lens, its mobile application which allows you to scan documents on Android and iOS. Bad news for this tool much appreciated by users …
This is a news that will not please the – many – users of Microsoft Lens PDF Scanner – formerly known as Office Lens -, since the company announced that it would end the application very soon. Launched in 2014, this tool allows you to convert photos of printed or manuscripts to digital files in PDF, Word, PowerPoint or Excel format and save them directly in OneNote or OneDrive. Very popular, it has been downloaded more than 50 million times from the Play Store and received excellent notes on it as well as on the App Store. In short, it is a free, practical application and, therefore, much appreciated. However, Microsoft will make a progressive withdrawal from September 2025, as reported by Bleeping Computer. The Redmond firm invites users to turn to Copilot instead.
Microsoft Lens: What alternatives for users?
The removal of Microsoft Lens will be in several steps. The withdrawal process will start in mid-September, so that the new installations on the Play Store and the App Store are deactivated in October. Finally, in November, Microsoft Lens will be definitively withdrawn from application shops and, in December, it will no longer allow new digitalizations. Users will be able to continue to access their existing documents since the “Myscans” section, but the app will no longer be taken care of.
Instead, the Redmond firm encourages users to turn to Microsoft 365 Copilot to scan their documents, which will be saved on OneDrive in the “Mycreations” section. However, Copilot does not resume all the functions of Lens. This is particularly the case for direct recording in OneNote, Word or PowerPoint, the digitization of business cards or even reading aloud, although the company has committed to continuing to add new functions and improve those existing thereafter.
Fortunately, other solutions exist to continue to digitize your documents from your smartphone. Among them, Adobe Scan or even the digitization function integrated into Google Drive. For their part, users on iOS can go through notes. Finally, those who prefer open source solutions can turn to Oss Document Scanner.
The disappearance of Microsoft Lens is part of a broader trend of the company, which intends to purify its offer and concentrate it around artificial intelligence. Thus, a year ago, she already said goodbye to Windows Paint 3D. In May, it also announced to put an end to the automatic filling of the passwords of Microsoft Authenticator in July, advising users to go through Edge instead. Finally, she had warned Microsoft Publisher’s aficionados that the computer assisted publication application would be deleted from Microsoft 365 in October 2026. Who will be the next?
