A Personal Journey Through Enshittification

As an important part of my work I often need to scan paper documents, and then use those pdf documents generated to update records or often reprint copies of the same documents. Using a full size document scanner/copier is often not an option or is just plain inconvenient compared with the quick availability of cell phone scanning. For anyone who is used cell phone scanning at any sort of professional scale, you know that it is often finicky. White documents come out gray, stray shadows ruin the contrast on half the page, text and images alongside each other Turn out to be difficult to optimize.

Enter Microsoft Office Lens. This was a great little app that has excellent filters making it easy to fix shadows and white balance in a snap (or rather a tap). However, in order to use all the features, Microsoft began nudging users toward Microsoft Office Mobile. For example, did you want to view or edit those scanned PDFs? Better get another app to connect your other Microsoft apps. Congratulations, you now have multiple redundant apps! Office Mobile replaced the Lens Scanner on my device.

Microsoft Office Mobile was itself discontinued in 2023 in favor of Microsoft 365 (Office). This brought the same functionality while also pushing other niche Microsoft apps (like OneNote). In the latest update, I was horrified (but hardly surprised) to see that the latest app is little more than a platform to launch Microsoft Copilot, their AI assistant that the company has clearly gone all-in with. Mind you, there is already a Bing App, a Microsoft Launcher, Edge Web Browser, and a dedicated Copilot App, all shilling the Microsoft AI front and center.

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

It's at this time that I decide to re-evaluate an App I had tried months ago: OSS Document Scanner. When I first experimented with making the switch, I found that it lacked the image processing, text recognition, and ease of use I needed to really replace what at the time was still a very usable non-free app.

When I checked in on the project, I was blown away! This was not the juvenile scanning app I tried to test-drive before. Here instead was a fully functioning, powerful, and user-focused app. It is able to quickly and accurately detect document edges, scan multiple pages in a row, detect text (with a simple in-app download), and crucially, to automagically white balance each page for clear, readable, and printable results. Saving and exporting is a cinch too.

If I sound overly excited, that's probably true. This was a frequent pain point in my day to day work. I prefer to use FOSS apps whenever it makes sense to do so. There are many tasks in my life that are simply not easily replicated by FOSS software, so when I find one that is actually better than the non-free options out there, it really makes my day and I want to share it. If you ever use your phone to scan documents, check out this app, or share with a coworker:

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