You need to send a signed form, an ID card or a receipt as a PDF, today. The free scanner apps on your phone either stamp a watermark on every page, ask for a subscription after three scans, or want an account before they let you export.
Short answer: open Scan Document to PDF on your phone, tap Take photo, check the four corners, pick the Enhanced or Black & White filter and tap Create PDF. FileConvy finds the page edges, straightens a tilted photo and whitens the paper. There is no watermark, no signup and no app store download, and you can put up to 30 pages in one PDF. If you want it on your home screen, install FileConvy as an app in one tap.
This post walks through the scanner and four smaller features that shipped with it: the installable app, sharing files from WhatsApp, compressing a photo to an exact size like 50 KB, and pasting a screenshot straight into any tool.
What's New at a Glance
| Feature | What it does | Where it works |
|---|---|---|
| Scan Document to PDF | Photo → cropped, straightened, cleaned PDF scan | Any phone or computer browser |
| Install as an app | FileConvy icon on your home screen or desktop | Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows, Mac |
| Share from WhatsApp | FileConvy appears in the share menu for PDFs, images, Word and Excel files | Android, after installing |
| Compress image to a target size | "Under 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 KB or 1 MB" presets, or your own limit | Any browser |
| Paste with Ctrl+V | Paste a screenshot or copied file into a tool instead of browsing for it | Computers with a keyboard |
| Continue with this file | Send the result of one tool straight into the next one | Every tool's result screen |
How to Scan a Document to PDF With Your Phone
- Open fileconvy.com/tool/scan-document and tap Take photo. You can also choose several photos from your gallery at once.
- FileConvy marks the page with four corner circles. If a corner is off, drag it onto the page edge, or tap Auto detect to try again. Whole photo keeps the full picture.
- Pick a filter:
- Enhanced whitens the paper and removes shadows but keeps colour. It suits most documents.
- Black & White gives the sharpest text for printed pages and forms.
- Grayscale sits between the two.
- Original keeps the photo's colours, for photos or coloured certificates.
- Add more pages. You can rotate, reorder, re-crop or delete each one.
- Choose A4 for normal pages or Fit to scan for small items like ID cards and receipts, then tap Create PDF and download.
How the scanner straightens a crooked photo
When you photograph a page at an angle, it comes out as a trapezoid. The scanner first separates the bright paper from the darker background, takes the corners of the largest page-shaped area, then maps those four corners onto a flat rectangle (a perspective warp). The Enhanced filter then divides out the uneven brightness of the paper, which is why a shadow from your hand fades instead of turning into a grey smear.
Tips for a clean scan
- Use a darker surface. A white page on a white table gives the edge detector nothing to find. A wooden desk or dark cloth works well.
- Keep the whole page in the frame, with a little background on every side.
- Avoid hard shadows. Hold the phone straight above the page, near a window rather than under a ceiling lamp.
- For ID cards, scan the front and back as two pages and choose Fit to scan, so the PDF isn't mostly white A4 space.
Is it private?
The edge detection, straightening, filters and PDF building all run on your phone, so your photos are not uploaded. Only the finished PDF is sent to our server once to draw the preview on the result screen, and that copy is deleted straight away. The privacy policy has the details.
FileConvy vs Typical Free Scanner Apps
| FileConvy scanner | Typical free scanner app | |
|---|---|---|
| Watermark | None | Often on the free plan |
| Account | Not needed | Often required to export |
| Install | Optional, about one tap, no app store | App store download |
| Pages per PDF | Up to 30 | Varies; some cap free exports |
| Filters | Enhanced, B&W, Grayscale, Original | Similar |
| Works offline | No, needs an internet connection | Usually yes |
| Text recognition (OCR) | Separate step: OCR PDF | Sometimes built in, often paid |
If you scan dozens of pages every day with no signal, a dedicated app still has the edge. For the usual "send this form as a PDF" job, a browser scanner with no watermark is faster.
Install FileConvy as a Free App
FileConvy is a Progressive Web App, so it can sit on your home screen like a normal app without going through the Play Store or App Store.
- Android (Chrome or Edge): after a tool finishes, an Install banner appears. Tap it, or open the browser menu and choose Install app.
- iPhone and iPad (Safari): tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.
- Windows and Mac (Chrome or Edge): click the install icon at the right of the address bar.
Step-by-step instructions for each device are on the install page. Installing adds an icon and a few small files, far less than a normal app, and you remove it like any other app.
Send Files From WhatsApp Straight to FileConvy
Once installed on Android, FileConvy shows up in the share menu. Long-press a PDF, photo, Word (.docx) or Excel (.xlsx) file in WhatsApp, Gallery or Files, tap Share, choose FileConvy, and pick a tool: compress it, sign it, convert it or scan it to PDF. The file stays on your phone until you choose the tool.
iPhone doesn't allow websites in its share menu, so on iPhone open FileConvy and choose the file there.
Compress a Photo to Exactly 50 KB (or Any Limit)
Job portals, visa forms and exam sites love rules like "photo under 50 KB" or "signature under 20 KB". A quality slider makes you guess. Compress Image now has size presets instead: under 20 KB, 50 KB, 100 KB, 200 KB, 500 KB, 1 MB, or a custom limit.
It searches for the highest JPEG quality that fits under your limit, and only shrinks the pixel size if even a low quality is still too big. If your photo is already small enough, you get it back unchanged. This runs in your browser, and it counts 1 KB as 1,000 bytes so the file stays under the limit whichever way the form measures it.
For signatures and photo sizes by form type, see how to resize a photo or signature to a KB limit.
Paste a Screenshot With Ctrl+V
On a computer, you no longer have to save a screenshot and then browse for it. Take the screenshot, open any tool (for example Image to Text or Remove Background), and press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac). Copied image files work too, as long as the tool accepts that file type.
Chain Tools Without Re-uploading
Most real jobs take more than one step: scan a form, then sign it, then compress it for email. Every result screen now shows Continue with this file, with the sensible next tools for that file type. A scanned PDF can go straight to Sign PDF, Compress PDF or Add Page Numbers; an image can go to Compress, Resize, Crop, Scan to PDF or Remove Background. Where your browser supports it, a Share button also sends the result straight to WhatsApp or email.
A Real Example: An Application Form in Five Minutes
- Scan the signed form and your ID card (front and back) with Scan Document to PDF, Black & White filter, three pages.
- Tap Continue with this file → Compress to bring the PDF under the portal's 2 MB limit.
- For the separate passport photo box, open Compress Image, choose Under 50 KB, and upload the result.
- Tap Share to send yourself a copy on WhatsApp.
No scanner, no laptop, no watermark.
Quick FAQ
Is the FileConvy document scanner free without a watermark? Yes. There is no watermark, no signup and no daily page limit. You can scan up to 30 pages into one PDF at a time.
Are my scanned photos uploaded? No. Cropping, straightening, filters and building the PDF happen in your browser. Only the finished PDF is sent once to draw the preview on the result screen, and that copy is deleted straight away.
Is there a FileConvy app on the Play Store or App Store? No store download is needed. FileConvy installs from the browser: Install in Chrome or Edge, or Share → Add to Home Screen in Safari on iPhone. It is the same free website, saved as an app.
Can I share a PDF from WhatsApp to FileConvy? On Android, yes, once FileConvy is installed: it appears in the share menu for PDFs, images, Word and Excel files. iPhone does not allow websites in the share menu.
How do I compress a photo to under 50 KB? Open Compress Image, choose the "Under 50 KB" preset and upload the photo. The tool picks the best quality that fits and only reduces the pixel size when it has to.
Does the scanner work offline? No. FileConvy needs an internet connection to load, even when it is installed as an app.
Can it turn a scan into editable text? Not in the same step. After scanning, open OCR PDF with your scan to make the text searchable and copyable.