Among several useful tips and features is the Continuity Camera. It lets you use your iPhone's camera to take photos or scan documents and attach them to a Mac. You can do this for your emails or if you want to add an image to a note. This adds a good level of convenience to your workflow and makes your iPhone even better with your Mac.
If that sounds interesting, here's how you can use your iPhone to scan and add documents to your Mac.
What is Continuity Camera
The technology that lets you use your iPhone's camera to scan documents and seamlessly add them to a Mac is called Continuity Camera. Let's say you're typing an email on your Mac and you need to attach a document like a receipt. Instead of first clicking an image with your phone, sending it to your Mac, and then adding it as an attachment, you can use Continuity to make your job easier.
All you need is a Mac running macOS Mojave or later and an iPhone running iOS 12 or later.
How to Use an iPhone to Scan and Add Documents to Your Mac
You can use Continuity Camera to scan and add photos directly to several apps and programs on your Mac. This includes Notes, Mail, Finder, iMessage, etc. It also works with some third-party apps natively. Here's how to use it.
Step 1: Open the application on your Mac to which you want to attach a scanned document, for example Mail application.
Step 2: Right click on the area where you want to add the scanned document.
Step 3: In the context menu, you will see a section at the end listed under your iPhone.
Step 4: Select Scan Documents option.
Step 5: This will open the camera viewfinder on your iPhone. Now place your iPhone over the document you want to scan.
Step 6: Your iPhone will automatically detect the document and scan the affected area.
Step 7: If the document was not detected, you can manually press the shutter button to capture it or use additional features such as camera flash if scanning in the dark.
Step 8: Once you have captured all the pages or documents to be attached, tap on the Save button at the bottom right of your screen.
Step 9: Now you will see that the app on your Mac has a new attachment added automatically. The attachment has been added in PDF format on the Mail app.
Step 10: In the Notes app, the documents have been added as images.
If you don't want to scan a document, you can also choose to take a photo via your iPhone to add as an attachment or the Add sketch option to attach a doodle.
How to scan and add documents on unsupported apps
This feature is not present on all third-party apps. Therefore, if you want to scan a document through your iPhone and attach it to Gmail on Chrome, the above method will not work. Here's what you can do instead.
Step 1: Open a Finder window on your Mac and navigate to a directory where you want to save the scanned document.
Step 2: Now right-click and hover your mouse over Import from iPhone.
Step 3: Select Scan Document.
Step 4: This will turn the camera viewfinder back on your iPhone. Now place your iPhone over the document you want to scan.
Step 5: Your iPhone will automatically detect the document and scan the affected area.
Step 6: If the document was not detected, you can manually press the shutter button to capture it or use additional features such as camera flash if scanning in the dark.
Step 7: Once you have captured all the pages or documents to be attached, tap on the Save button at the bottom right of your screen.
Step 8: The scanned document will now be saved as an image in the folder.
You can also choose to take a photo or add a sketch instead.
Scan and attach documents to your Mac on the go
It's an efficient way to attach documents to your emails and notes on your Mac. You don't need to manually take photos of all your documents and crop them individually. It is a useful tool that many professionals will appreciate.