Scanning Documents With Your Phone

The Papyrus mobile app turns any modern phone into a competent document scanner. Useful for: field inspections, in-the-moment capture of paper documents, processing supplier invoices that arrive in physical form.

Quick scan

Open the Papyrus mobile app
Tap the camera (✚) button on the home screen
Point at the document
App auto-detects edges — green outline confirms good framing
Tap the shutter
Multi-page: tap “Add page” for the next side
Tap “Done” when finished
Review the deskewed result
Configure: destination folder, tags, classification
Tap “Upload”

The document queues for upload. If you're online, it starts immediately; if offline, it waits for connectivity.

What the app does to your photo

Before upload:

Edge detection: finds the document boundary
Perspective correction: makes the captured rectangle truly rectangular even if you tilted the phone
Deskew: rotates to align horizontally
Contrast normalisation: improves OCR readability
Multi-page combine: merges multiple captures into one PDF

What it doesn't do:

Erase visible marks (signatures, stamps, handwriting stay)
Remove redacted content (you'd want a real redaction tool for that)
Translate or summarise (the Copilot does that, later)

GPS and timestamp

By default, photos capture:

GPS coordinates (with accuracy estimate)
Device timestamp
Device model fingerprint
Your signed-in identity

This metadata is stored alongside the document. For field-officer workflows (NGO programme delivery, inspection records, county-level service evidence), this provenance is genuinely useful for audit.

If you don't want GPS captured for a specific scan, toggle GPS off in the camera screen (gear icon).

Multi-page documents

For a multi-page document:

Capture page 1 (auto-detect, shutter)
Tap “Add page”
Capture page 2
Repeat for as many pages as needed
Tap “Done”

The pages combine into one PDF. Order matches the order you captured.

Reorder, retake, delete

After capture but before upload:

Reorder: long-press a page thumbnail and drag
Retake: tap a page → “Retake”
Delete: tap a page → trash icon

Quality tips

Hold steady: use both hands; rest elbows
Even lighting: avoid hard shadows
Plain background: the document on a contrasting colour helps edge detection
Distance: fill the viewfinder with the document; not too close, not too far
Glare: avoid shooting directly at glossy paper under bright light

OCR happens server-side

Once uploaded, OCR runs on the server (typically within 30 seconds). The on-device capture pipeline doesn't OCR locally — that keeps the app fast and battery-friendly.

If you want offline OCR (rare), the on-device classification feature is closer to what you want.