Free Mic LensPDF Scanner & Editor
A Microsoft Office Lens alternative for the web.
Mic Lens is a free online document scanner, OCR engine, and PDF editor that runs entirely in your browser on PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android. Scan paper documents with your camera, extract text from photos, convert images to searchable PDFs, edit pages, and export everything in seconds — without uploading your files to any server. A fast, privacy-first alternative for people looking for a Microsoft Lens-style experience on the web.
Drop image here
or use one of the options below
JPG, PNG, WEBP, BMP, GIF, HEIC up to 25 MB
Extracted text
Upload an image to extract its text. Processing happens entirely in your browser — your file never leaves your device.
100% private. All recognition runs locally with WebAssembly. No image is uploaded to any server.
Free PDF Editor & Scanner
Merge, split, rotate, delete pages, add page numbers, add watermark, compress — all free, all client-side, no upload, no signup.
Merge PDFs
Combine two or more PDF files into a single document.
All operations run locally in your browser. Your file is never uploaded to a server.
Everything a PDF editor should do
The most-used PDF operations, all delivered as a single browser app — no installation, no fees.
Merge PDFs
Combine any number of PDFs into one continuous document, in the order you choose.
Split PDF
Pull out specific page ranges and download each range as its own PDF file.
Extract Pages
Pick the pages you need and export them as a single new PDF in one click.
Reorder Pages
Type a new page order (e.g. 3,1,2,4) to instantly rearrange your document.
Reverse Pages
Flip the entire page order so the last page becomes the first.
Duplicate Pages
Duplicate selected pages a chosen number of times in place — handy for handouts.
Rotate Pages
Rotate selected pages by 90°, 180° or 270° to fix sideways or upside-down scans.
Delete Pages
Remove unwanted pages — blank pages, ads, cover sheets — from any PDF.
Insert Blank Pages
Drop blank pages after specific page numbers — perfect for double-sided printing.
Add Page Numbers
Stamp clean page numbers in the footer of every page in your document.
Header / Footer
Add custom header or footer text in any of six positions on every page.
Add Watermark
Apply a diagonal text watermark like CONFIDENTIAL or DRAFT to every page.
Crop Pages
Trim equal margins from every page to remove white borders or scanning artefacts.
Edit Metadata
Set or update PDF title, author, subject and keywords in seconds.
Compress PDF
Re-save with object-stream compression to shrink file size for email and storage.
PDF to Text
Extract clean editable text from any PDF — works on both native and scanned files.
Image to PDF
Turn JPG, PNG, WEBP or HEIC photos into a polished, searchable PDF document.
Everything in one app
Four scanning tools rolled into a single, private, browser-based workflow.
Image to Text
Drop a JPG, PNG, WEBP, BMP, GIF or HEIC photo and pull out clean editable text in seconds. The OCR engine supports more than 100 languages, including Latin, Cyrillic, CJK, Arabic, and Greek scripts. Perfect for receipts, screenshots, lecture slides, book passages, and handwritten notes that you do not want to retype.
Image to PDF
Turn any photo into a polished PDF document with proper margins and embedded fonts. Optional OCR makes the resulting PDF fully searchable — every word is selectable text rather than just a bitmap, so you can search with Cmd-F, copy passages, or feed the file into another tool that expects machine-readable content.
Scan Document Online
Open Mic Lens on your phone and tap the camera button to capture a page directly from your phone camera. The image is processed instantly on-device, so even sensitive material like contracts, ID documents, medical reports, and invoices stays on your phone. There is no app to install, no signup, and no usage cap.
PDF to Text & Editor
Pull plain text out of any PDF — both native PDFs and scanned ones. For text-based PDFs the extraction is instant; for scanned PDFs, Mic Lens automatically routes the pages through OCR. You can review, correct, and edit the result in place before exporting it as a TXT file or back into a clean searchable PDF.
Why Mic Lens?
A modern, private, free alternative to clunky desktop scanners and cloud-based OCR services.
100% Private
Your image never touches a server. OCR runs in your browser tab via WebAssembly. Closing the tab clears everything.
Instant Results
A typical scan completes in 3–10 seconds depending on image size and language. The OCR model is cached after the first use.
100+ Languages
Recognise Latin, Cyrillic, CJK, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and more — out of the box, no extra downloads.
Many Formats In
JPG, PNG, WEBP, BMP, GIF, HEIC. Drag, paste, or capture from your camera. Files up to 25 MB.
Many Formats Out
Copy to clipboard, download as TXT, save a clean searchable PDF — or all three at once.
Works Everywhere
Mobile, tablet, laptop, desktop. Any modern browser — Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge — runs the full app.
How Mic Lens works
Three short steps from raw photo to clean editable text or a polished PDF.
Drop your image
Upload a photo, paste a screenshot, or open the page on your phone and tap Use camera. JPG, PNG, WEBP, BMP, GIF and HEIC all work.
Choose a language
Pick the language of the text in your image. The OCR model loads once on first use, then is cached locally for every future scan.
Copy or download
Edit the recognised text in place, copy it to your clipboard, save a TXT file, or export a clean searchable PDF.
What people scan with Mic Lens
Whatever the source material, Mic Lens turns it into something searchable and editable.
Receipts
Turn paper receipts into searchable text for monthly expense reports.
Whiteboards
Capture meeting notes from a whiteboard photo and edit them later.
Books and articles
Quote a passage from a book or printed paper without retyping it.
Business cards
Extract names, titles, and contact details directly into your CRM.
Handwritten notes
Convert clean handwriting from a notebook into editable digital text.
Invoices and forms
Pull line items, totals, and form fields straight into a spreadsheet.
Screenshots
Grab text from videos, slides, error messages, terminal output, or app screens.
Foreign documents
Extract text first, then paste into your translator of choice.
ID documents
Privately extract numbers and details — your photo never leaves the device.
Schoolwork
Snap a textbook page and turn the answers into editable study notes.
Old archives
Make decades-old scanned PDFs searchable for the first time.
Recipes
Save your grandmother's handwritten recipes into a clean shareable doc.
A free document scanner that respects your privacy
Mic Lens is an open, browser-based document scanner and OCR (optical character recognition) tool. It is built on well-established WebAssembly OCR engines and runs entirely on your device, so the photos and PDFs you scan never leave your browser. There is no signup, no usage limit, and no watermark on the output. If you are searching for a free, lightweight, privacy-first alternative to desktop scanner apps or cloud OCR services, Mic Lens covers the most common workflows in a single page.
Why a browser-based scanner matters
Most online scanners upload your file to a remote server, which means a copy of your document leaves your computer the moment you press the upload button. For sensitive material — medical reports, contracts, ID documents, salary statements, legal correspondence — that is rarely acceptable. Mic Lens uses a WebAssembly build of the open-source Tesseract OCR engine that runs in the browser tab itself. Once the model is loaded (a few megabytes, cached after the first scan), every subsequent scan happens locally with no network traffic involved. You can verify it yourself by opening the network tab in your browser developer tools while scanning.
When to use OCR online
OCR is the fastest way to convert an image of text into something you can search, edit, copy, or feed into another application. Whether you have a receipt, a contract page, a slide from a lecture, a snapshot of a whiteboard, or a screenshot of code, dropping it into Mic Lens gives you back clean editable text within seconds. From there you can paste it into your notes app, your CRM, a spreadsheet, a translation tool, or back into a clean searchable PDF.
Tips for the best results
- • Make sure the page is well lit and roughly aligned with the camera frame.
- • Avoid heavy shadows, glare, and motion blur. A tripod or a stack of books helps for documents.
- • Crop the image to the area you actually want before scanning — it improves both speed and accuracy.
- • Pick the correct language. Mixed-language documents work best when scanned in passes per language.
- • For handwriting, write clearly with a dark pen on a light background. Cursive recognition is limited.
- • If a scan looks messy, try a higher-resolution photo or screenshot before re-running OCR.
- • For long PDFs, run a few pages at a time so you can review the output as you go.
Mic Lens on PC, Mac, and mobile
On a desktop or laptop, drag any image file from your file manager into the upload zone, or paste a screenshot directly from the clipboard. On mobile, open the page in Chrome or Safari, tap Use camera, and capture the document directly with your phone camera. The interface is touch-friendly and works equally well in portrait and landscape. There is no app to install — the entire tool is delivered as a regular web page that you can bookmark or save to your home screen as a Progressive Web App.
A privacy-first alternative
If you have been using a scanner app on your phone but want a quick web-based option for occasional scanning on a laptop, Mic Lens fills that gap. It is independent and not affiliated with Microsoft Lens, Adobe Scan, CamScanner, or any other product. It is simply a free public utility that uses well-known open-source OCR libraries and modern browser features to bring scanning to the web. Bookmark the page, come back whenever you need it, and your files always stay on your device.
A free web alt to Office Lens
For users searching for an Office Lens alt, Mic Lens delivers the same core workflow — capture, OCR, export — without leaving the browser tab. Unlike most Lens app alternatives, Mic Lens does not require a login, an installation, or even a continuous internet connection after the first scan loads. It is a fast, friction-free alt to Office Lens that lives at a single URL and runs anywhere you have a modern browser. There is no mobile-only restriction, no Microsoft account, and no telemetry; the entire app is one static page plus a WebAssembly OCR worker that the browser caches after first use.
People sometimes describe Mic Lens as a "lens app alternative for the desktop", because it lets you do from a laptop what office workers usually have to do from a phone. Plug a webcam in, hold a page in front of it, and you have a working scanner. Drop in an existing photo or screenshot and you get the same result. Either way, the recognised text and exported PDF are downloaded directly to your machine — no cloud round trip and no opaque server-side processing.
Frequently asked questions
Everything you might want to know before you scan.
Is Mic Lens really free?+
Yes. There is no usage limit, no signup, and no watermark. Mic Lens runs in your browser and uses your device's resources, which means there are no server costs to recoup.
Do I need to install anything?+
No. Mic Lens is a website. Open it on any modern browser — Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge — and start scanning. You can also save it to your phone's home screen as a Progressive Web App.
Where does my image go?+
Nowhere. Files are processed in your browser tab and discarded when you close it. Nothing is uploaded to any server. You can verify this by opening the developer tools network panel while scanning.
Why is the first scan slower?+
The OCR model is downloaded the first time you scan in a given language. After that it is cached, so subsequent scans for that language are much faster — typically a few seconds for a single page.
How accurate is the OCR?+
Accuracy depends on image quality and language. Clean, high-contrast Latin-script documents typically reach above 95% character accuracy. Handwriting, low-light photos, and unusual fonts are harder.
Which file types can I upload?+
JPG/JPEG, PNG, WEBP, BMP, GIF, HEIC, AVIF, and TIFF images are all supported. Native PDFs are extracted directly; scanned PDFs are routed through OCR automatically.
Which languages are supported?+
More than 100. Common ones include English, Turkish, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Hindi, and Vietnamese.
Can I export to PDF?+
Yes. After scanning you can download a clean A4 PDF where every recognised word is real selectable text, not just an image. The PDF is generated in your browser using pdf-lib.
Is this an Office Lens alternative?+
Yes. Mic Lens is an independent, free, browser-based alternative to Microsoft Office Lens. It delivers the same core workflow — capture, recognise, export — but runs as a web app at miclens.com instead of a mobile app, so you can use it on a laptop or desktop without installing anything. We built Mic Lens specifically as a quick alt to Office Lens for desktop users.
Is Mic Lens affiliated with Microsoft Lens?+
No. Mic Lens is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Microsoft. Microsoft Lens and Office Lens are trademarks of their respective owners and are mentioned only descriptively for comparison.
Can I use Mic Lens on my phone?+
Yes. Open this page in Chrome or Safari on your phone and tap Use camera. You can also save the site to your home screen for quick access.