Scan documents

Scan paper — a receipt, a contract, a letter — into a note as a PDF you can search.

Scan into a note

Open the note and tap where the scan should go.
Tap the paperclip in the note's bar and choose Scan Documents…, or type /scan and tap the row.
Hold the device over each page. The scanner finds the edges of the page by itself.
Tap Save.

Scan into a new note

Touch and hold the blue circle at the bottom of the screen, then tap Scan — the outlined button nearest your thumb. A new note opens with the scanner already up. On a device without a camera, the button isn't there.

Scan from your iPhone or iPad

In the note, right-click in the text where the scan should go.
Choose Import from iPhone or iPad ▸ Scan Documents.
Scan the pages on your iPhone or iPad and tap Save. The scan lands in the note on the Mac.

The scanner is the system's own, the same one Notes and Files use: you can retake a page, drag the corners of the crop, and choose a color filter before you save.

What you get

All the pages become one PDF, attached to the note as an ordinary PDF card. The words on the pages are read and stored invisibly in the file, so:

search finds a scan by any word in it, on every device;
the same PDF, mailed or exported, is searchable in Preview and Spotlight too.

A PDF you attach from disk that turns out to be a scan is read the same way — unless it already has text in it, or carries annotations that would be lost.

Scanned pages follow the picture size in Settings ▸ Editor ▸ Pictures, so a five-page scan takes a megabyte or two rather than twenty-five.

Tip: You can also start a scan from the Quick Capture widget, from Control Center, or by saying "Scan into NotaBene".