Microsoft Lens Is Retired: Save Your Scans, Then Pick a Replacement (Android)

Microsoft Lens is no longer an app you can install. Microsoft retired it in early 2026, and the dates are on its own support page, Retirement of Microsoft Lens:

• 9 January 2026: retirement began.
• 9 February 2026: support ended, and the app was removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play.
• 9 March 2026: no new scans can be created in the app.

If Lens is still on your phone, your old scans are still there, with a condition Microsoft states plainly: you can access previous scans only if the app remains installed and you stay signed in to the account you last used. Uninstall it, or sign out, and that access goes with it.

So the question is no longer whether Lens is good. It was. The question is what to do with the scans you have, and what to scan with from now on.

First, get your scans out of Lens

Do this before anything else, and before your phone's storage cleaner suggests removing an app you no longer open.

1. Open Lens and go to the list of past scans.
2. Open each one you need and share or save it: to the phone's files, to a cloud folder, or by email to yourself. A PDF export keeps multi-page scans together.
3. Check the destination folder on another device, then decide whether the app stays installed.

If you had been saving scans to OneDrive, OneNote or Word as you went, those copies live in those services and are unaffected. The only scans at risk are the ones that exist solely inside the app.

Microsoft's own replacement: OneDrive

Microsoft points Lens users to the scanning feature built into the OneDrive app. For anyone whose scans were going to OneDrive anyway, it is the shortest move: same account, same folders. The same support page notes one difference that matters to some people: OneDrive does not support saving scans locally on your device. Each scan goes to your OneDrive storage, and you need a Microsoft account and a connection to use it.

What to look for in a replacement

Lens did four things people came to rely on. Check a replacement against them:

1. Edge detection and cleanup. The page is cropped, straightened and brightened without manual work.
2. Multi-page capture into one PDF. A contract is one file, not eight photos.
3. Text you can search. OCR, ideally on the device so the pages are not sent to a server.
4. Somewhere to put the result. A cloud folder, the phone's own files, or a share sheet that lets you choose each time.

Then add the two questions that are specific to your situation: do you want an account requirement at all, and what languages does the OCR need to read?

The replacement I build: DocFlow Scanner

Disclosure: DocFlow Scanner is my own app, so weigh this section accordingly. It is an Android scanner that is free to download and to scan with; nothing needs an account, the free plan shows ads, and it does not stamp a watermark on your documents. Saving, sharing and reading the text are paid, though, as set out below.

Against the four points above:

• Edge detection, cropping and enhancement on capture, with dedicated modes for ID cards (front and back on one page), receipts, notes, books and whiteboards.
• Multi-page capture into a single PDF, plus images-to-PDF from the gallery.
• OCR in Arabic and English on the device (Pro). The pages are not uploaded for recognition. Recognised text can be exported to Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
• Saving where you choose (Pro): the phone's storage or any app in the share sheet.

Beyond that, it has the PDF tools Lens never had, which is what most people reached for a second app to do: merge, split, compress, password-protect and watermark, plus an electronic signature you draw or type and place on the page. On-device translation for supported languages is available after a one-time model download. All of these are part of DocFlow Pro.

What it does not have: the OneNote and Office integrations. If your workflow was "scan straight into OneNote", DocFlow does not reproduce that, and OneDrive's scanner is closer to it. DocFlow is Android only. On price: the free plan covers scanning, importing images or PDFs, basic editing and keeping documents inside the app. OCR, exporting, sharing, saving and printing a PDF, signing, translation and the PDF tools need DocFlow Pro, sold through Google Play Billing as a monthly or yearly subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase. There is no free trial at the time of writing (October 2026).

Other options worth knowing

• Google Drive on Android has a scan button that saves straight to Drive, with cleanup and multi-page support. Like OneDrive, it assumes you want the result in that cloud.
• Adobe Scan is a capable free scanner with an Adobe account; where it fits and where it does not is in the Adobe Scan alternative guide.
• For a wider comparison of what "free" scanners actually give you, see the best free document scanner for Android and, if the watermark is the problem, scan to PDF without a watermark.

Moving over without losing anything

1. Export your Lens scans as above.
2. Install the replacement and scan one page you do not care about. Check the crop, the file size and where the file was saved.
3. If you need searchable text, run OCR on a page with small print and check a few lines against the paper.
4. Only then uninstall Lens.

The scans people lose in app retirements are the ones that were "in the app" and nowhere else. Make the copies first; the choice of replacement can wait a day.