Microsoft Office Lens getting the axe

https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/08/rip-microsoft-lens-a-simple-little-app-thats-getting-replaced-by-ai/

12•zanmat0•6mo ago

Comments

gigel82•6mo ago

Ooh, pandemic flashback. Used this tool to "scan" the kiddos' homework with my phone.

Switched to Quickscan later because it also integrates nicely with paperless-ngx.

Fade_Dance•6mo ago

Any good alternatives?

Onavo•6mo ago

I think they have the functionality integrated into the OneDrive and Office apps. Not sure if they intend to remove those features but it might be a play at upselling the users.

Fade_Dance•6mo ago

Yeah, this was one of the "simple apps" I had in my utilities folder. Having it bolted onto an office suite sort of kills the appeal. Wondering if there any fixed-function alternatives. Reddit had a few, including an open source alternative, but comments were also saying that they weren't of the same quality. Apparently Adobe has a good one, but it's tied to a subscription.

MortyWaves•6mo ago

Oh come on, why? What the fuck. Extremely frustrating as this is something I’ve been using for more or less ten years. The fact it can be used on whiteboards and paper is immeasurably useful.

These stupid decisions to force AI into everything while not replacing any of the existing functionality should be considered crimes. The point of Lens is that it takes almost perfect scans in place of a scanner, and correctly scans whiteboards too.

I’m guessing the people that decided to kill it off believe having “AI” summarising text in a document is somehow equivalent.

We truly are at peak of enshitification.

Adobe Scan looks promising.

cognomano•6mo ago

I just use its fantastic border detection to scan documents to images. iOS notes can generate PDFs from a photo but I found it cumbersome. Any alternative?

twobitshifter•6mo ago

You don’t need to use notes, you can scan documents directly from the files app by long pressing anywhere in a folder, or using scan documents from the … menu.

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