Skip to Main Content

Students Tech Guide

Scanning With Google Drive

Be sure to have a Google account and the Google Drive app installed in your phone. Find the Google Drive app in the iPhone App Store or the Google Play Store.

Open the Google Drive app and click on the plus "+" sign at the bottom right.

Screenshot of Google Drive app with plus sign circled.

Hover your camera above the document and take a photo. If you like how it looks click "OK". If you don't, click "Retry".

Screenshot of book being scanned on Google Drive app. Retry button and OK button is at the bottom of the screen.

After clicking "OK", you will be given a preview of your document. It may not turn out quite as well as you would think. 

Screenshot of scanned book with options at the bottom of the screen.

To fix the scan, tap on the crop icon. Crop icon.

Adjust the blue lines using the dots to fit perfect on your document. Click "Done" when finished.

Screenshot of book being cropped partly with a blue square with dots on the corners and the middle of the lines.Screenshot of scanned book with blue lines around it.

If you want to change the color of your scan, click the paint palette icon. Paint palette icon.

Change the color of the scan as you see fit. You can choose None, Black and White, Color, or Color Drawing.

Screenshot of scanned page of a book. Screenshot of scanned page of a book with color options. The options are None, Black & White, Color, and Color Drawing. Color is chosen.

If you want to add more pages to your document, click the plus icon on the bottom left and continue scanning and editing.

 Icon for adding more pages. 

When done, click "Save".

You will then be directed to the "Save to Drive" dialog box. You can rename the file if you want and save it to anywhere you want in your Google Drive. Click "Save" when done or "Cancel" if you want to make more changes.

Screenshot of Save to Drive dialog box. Document title is called Scanned_20211203-0916.pdf. Account is the Gmail account. The folder saved is called My Drive. Cancel and Save buttons are at the bottom.