The new document scanner in SimpleumSafe 3.9
Letters, contracts, receipts, and other paper documents can be captured directly with SimpleumSafe on your iPhone or iPad and stored securely in the open Safe. SimpleumSafe 3.9 makes this workflow more flexible: the new document scanner is enabled by default, remembers important settings, and gives you more control over every page before import.
Key features at a glance
- Reusable settings: Your output format, color mode, quality profile, and automatic or manual capture mode are available again in the next scanning session.
- More control before import: You can review, retake, crop, filter, rotate, delete, and reorder pages.
- PDF or JPEG: Save a multi-page document as one PDF file or as individually numbered JPEG files.
- Searchable PDFs: Optical character recognition (OCR) adds recognized text to the PDF, so you can find scanned content using full-text search.
- Suitable quality levels: Compact, Balanced, and High provide clear choices between file size and image detail.
- Local processing: Scan images are processed on the device and are not saved automatically to the Photos library.
Why SimpleumSafe uses its own scanner
SimpleumSafe has let you capture paper documents directly on your iPhone or iPad since version 3.3. Until now, it used Apple’s system scanner. That capture interface works well, but SimpleumSafe has only limited options for tailoring it to recurring archiving tasks.
The new scanner therefore combines camera capture with its own page review and a controlled export process. The familiar Scan document entry point remains unchanged. After capturing your pages, you can review them more closely and decide how the result should be saved in your Safe.
Capture, review, and save
The workflow has three clear stages:
- Capture: The scanner detects the outline of the document and can capture it automatically once the page is held steadily in view. You can capture a page manually at any time using the shutter button or an iPhone volume button.
- Review: You can retake, crop, filter, rotate, or delete captured pages, and reorder pages in a multi-page document.
- Save: Finally, choose the file name, output format, and quality. SimpleumSafe also shows the number of pages and an estimate of the resulting file size.
The finished scan is saved in the folder where you started Scan document. The PDF or JPEG files appear in the Safe only after the output has been created successfully.
Settings SimpleumSafe remembers
After a successfully confirmed import, SimpleumSafe saves these settings on the current device:
- PDF or JPEG as the output format,
- Color, Grayscale, Black & White, or Photo as the color mode,
- Compact, Balanced, or High as the quality profile,
- automatic or manual capture,
- and whether a color mode should be applied to all pages.
This gives the next scan a suitable starting point. For example, if you regularly archive receipts in Black & White, using Compact quality and PDF format, you do not need to select that combination every time.
Temporary details such as zoom, flash state, detected document corners, pages already captured, or a file name that has not yet been confirmed apply only to the current scanning session.
PDF, JPEG, and text recognition
PDF is usually the most practical choice for multi-page documents: all pages are combined into one file in the chosen order. SimpleumSafe also performs optical character recognition (OCR) and adds the recognized text to the PDF. This allows you to use full-text search later to find words contained in a scanned letter, contract, or receipt.
When you choose JPEG, SimpleumSafe creates a separate, sequentially numbered file for each page. For example, a two-page scan named Contract is saved as Contract-01.jpg and Contract-02.jpg.
The three quality profiles help you balance image detail and storage requirements:
- Compact for clearly readable everyday documents with a smaller file size,
- Balanced as the recommended default for most documents,
- High for small text, fine details, or demanding originals.
Four color modes for different originals
- Color optimizes color documents for a clear appearance.
- Grayscale is suitable for documents where color information is not needed.
- Black & White creates a high-contrast image with a white paper background.
- Photo preserves more of the photographic appearance and avoids typical document contrast optimization.
You can select the color mode for each page individually or apply it to all pages in a multi-page document.
If you prefer the previous Apple scanner
The new document scanner is enabled by default in SimpleumSafe 3.9. If you prefer the previous Apple document scanner, disable New Document Scanner under Settings > Labs. The selection takes effect in the next scanning session; files you have already saved are not changed.