Going paperless sounds like a dream, but it often feels like a nightmare when you realize you need a scanner—a device most of us don’t have lying around. But what if your phone could do the job just as well? Enter scanning apps, the modern solution to digitizing documents. These apps use your phone’s camera to capture pages, crop and straighten them, and combine them into a PDF. Sounds perfect, right? But here’s where it gets controversial: many of these apps are cluttered with ads, hidden privacy violations, or shady practices like storing your documents in the cloud to train AI without your explicit consent. Frustrated by this, Pierre-Yves Nicolas created FairScan, an Android app that does one thing—and does it well: scan documents. No ads, no data harvesting, no nonsense. It’s free, open source, and available on the Google Play Store and F-Droid. To use it, simply place your document on a flat, well-lit surface, align the green box in the app, and snap a photo. Repeat for multiple pages, then export as a PDF or JPEG. And this is the part most people miss: lighting and document flatness are key to a clean scan. While FairScan lacks advanced features like OCR or post-scan editing, its simplicity is its strength. It’s a tool in the truest sense—no hidden agendas, no upsells. But this raises a bigger question: why is it so rare to find apps that just work without exploiting users? In an era of 'enshittification,' where platforms prioritize profit over user experience, FairScan feels like a breath of fresh air. Is this the future we want for apps, or should we demand more transparency and respect from developers? Let’s discuss in the comments—what’s your take on the state of app ecosystems today?
