How to Scan Homework and Assignments with Your Phone

Getting handwriting to read clearly

Pencil and light ink are the hard cases: pencil reflects light, and faint ink fades into the page. The fixes are the same — light the page evenly (window light beats a desk lamp), shoot straight-on, and choose the enhancement profile that darkens the writing without turning the page gray. For most handwritten work, the Black & White profile is the right call: it removes the paper's color and shadows, leaving dark strokes on a clean white background. High Contrast is the fallback for pages where you want to keep some shading or color.

• Write with darker strokes if you know you'll scan — or accept that Black & White will handle lighter strokes better than a raw photo.
• Avoid shadows: a page half in shade scans as two different tones.
• If a page has diagrams or colors that matter, use Document instead of Black & White.

Multi-page assignments: one file, in order

Teachers don't want seven separate images for one assignment. Scan each page, then create a single PDF from all of the scans in the PDF tools — you choose the images, and the pages land in the order you selected them. Adding all pages of an assignment to one PDF is free. (Merging separate PDF files together is the premium tool, so build the one PDF at creation time and you won't need it.)

1. Scan the pages in reading order — it makes selecting them in order trivial.
2. Apply the same enhancement profile to every page so the PDF looks consistent.
3. Create one PDF from the scans, in order.
4. Flip through it in the viewer before sending.

Naming the file

Name the PDF the way your teacher will file it: course, assignment, and your name — "Math 101 — Problem Set 4 — Sam Lee". You title the PDF when you create it, and the library search finds it by name later, which is also how you keep three semesters of scanned assignments from becoming a blur.

Sharing with teachers and classmates

The finished PDF opens in the built-in viewer for a final check, then goes out through the share sheet: upload it to the class portal, attach it to an email, or send it in a group chat. Sending the PDF rather than raw photos keeps the file small, keeps pages in order, and prints cleanly if the teacher prints it. Sharing is your action — the app keeps your scans in its local library and doesn't upload them for processing.

Class notes and worksheets too

The same routine works for the other direction: photographing handouts, worksheets, and whiteboards into a personal study archive. Scan the handout with Document or High Contrast, title it with the course and topic, and let the library's search-by-name and favorites do the organizing. Whiteboard photos benefit from corner correction more than most — you're rarely straight-on.

When the scan comes out wrong

• A dark band across the page: your phone's shadow fell on the paper. Move the light source or hold the phone higher and further back.
• Writing looks smeared or gray instead of crisp: the page was underlit. Rescan in brighter, more even light, and use High Contrast.
• The page looks warped at one edge: the capture was angled. Reshoot more straight-on — perspective correction fixes the rest.
• One page in a PDF came out sideways: rotate that photo and rebuild the PDF from the corrected scans.
• The PDF is too big to upload to the class portal: rebuild it at a lower quality setting, or scan in Black & White, which produces smaller files.

Frequently asked questions