Scan Documents From iPhone Directly to Your Mac

Your Mac has no scanner, but your iPhone's camera is a better one than most flatbeds — and macOS wires the two together natively. Right-click on the desktop, choose Import from iPhone → Scan Documents, and your iPhone wakes up in scanning mode; seconds later a straightened, cropped PDF lands exactly where you clicked. It's called Continuity Camera, it needs no app installs, and it works on Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia.

Scan into a folder

1. Right-click the desktop, or right-click empty space inside any Finder window.
2. Choose Import from iPhone (or Import from iPhone or iPad) → Scan Documents. If several devices are signed in, each is listed by name.
3. Your iPhone lights up with the document camera. Hold it over the page — it finds the edges and captures automatically, or tap the shutter yourself.
4. Keep going for more pages; each capture stacks into the same document. Tap a thumbnail to re-crop by dragging the corners.
5. Tap Save on the iPhone.

The document appears immediately in the folder you right-clicked, as a single PDF — multi-page scans arrive as one file, already deskewed and readable. There's no sync delay and nothing goes through iCloud; the transfer is direct and encrypted between the two devices.

Scan straight into apps

The same commands live inside document apps, so a scan can drop into whatever you're writing:

• Notes, Mail, TextEdit, Pages, Keynote, Numbers: right-click where you want the scan (or check the File or Insert menu) and choose Insert from iPhone → Scan Documents.
• The menu also offers Take Photo — one quick shot, no document processing — and Add Sketch on supported setups, which lets you draw on the iPhone and insert the result.

Scanning a receipt directly into the email you're composing beats photographing it, AirDropping it, and dragging it in — one step instead of three.

Scanning-mode tips

• The color mode button (three overlapping circles) switches between Color, Grayscale, Black & White, and Photo — Black & White makes crisp, small files for text documents.
• Auto capture too eager? Tap Auto in the top corner to switch to Manual and fire the shutter yourself.
• Shoot flat-on in decent light; the correction is good, but a hard shadow across the page survives into the PDF.
• Page order follows capture order, and you can retake any page before saving.

Requirements and quick fixes

Continuity Camera needs: both devices on Wi-Fi with Bluetooth on, signed in to the same Apple Account, physically near each other. The iPhone needs iOS 12 or later — any iPhone from the last several years qualifies.

If Import from iPhone is missing or greyed out:

1. Confirm Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are on, on both devices — this is the cause most of the time.
2. Check both are on the same Apple Account (System Settings → [your name] on each).
3. Unlock the iPhone once and try again; a long-idle phone can be slow to advertise itself.
4. Still nothing? Toggle Bluetooth off and on, on the Mac, or restart both devices.

When to use Notes on the iPhone instead

Continuity Camera needs the Mac and iPhone in the same room. When you're out — signing paperwork at an office, photographing a whiteboard — scan in the iPhone's Notes app instead (open a note, tap the paperclip or camera button, Scan Documents). The same scanning engine runs, and if Notes syncs over iCloud the scan is waiting on your Mac when you get back; from there, drag it out of Notes or use File → Export as PDF. Continuity Camera is the direct pipe for desk work; Notes is the asynchronous version of the same trick. Between them, a physical scanner has very little left to do.

Once it's scanned

PDFs fresh off the iPhone are often bigger than they need to be for email. See how to reduce a PDF's file size on Mac to shrink them with Preview's built-in filter.