(Credit: Microsoft)
Microsoft is killing off its Microsoft Lens scanner app for iOS and Android apps.
Launched in 2014 for the now-defunct Windows Phone, the mobile document scanner allows users to turn their paper documents, including things like invoices and receipts, into readable digital copies like PDFs or Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files.
The subscription-free app would go on to rack up over 100 million downloads on Google Play and roughly 136,000 ratings on the US App Store.
Microsoft now says the apps will be "retired," effective Sept. 15. Microsoft Lens will be removed from both app stores on Nov. 15, and the scanning capability in the apps will be shut off on Dec. 15. Existing scans will remain accessible in the app’s MyScans folder, as long as the app remains installed, even though you won’t be able to create any new ones.
Microsoft recommends that users try the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, which offers similar functionality. Scans saved to OneDrive when using Copilot will then be accessible via the MyCreations section in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.
Still, Microsoft 365 Copilot doesn't offer quite the same set of features as Microsoft Lens, at least right now. Bleeping Computer notes that it does not allow users to save their scans directly into other parts of the Microsoft ecosystem like OneNote, Word, or PowerPoint. It also doesn't provide any read-out-loud features or integrations with Microsoft's reading assistance tool, Immersive Reader.
Microsoft didn't give out any details about why it had specifically waited until now to kill off the popular app, but we've seen other highly adopted Microsoft apps get dropped this year.
Microsoft announced the decision to kill off the three-decade-old Microsoft Publisher back in March, with an October 2026 end-of-life date, citing how most of its functionality had now been incorporated in other Microsoft 365 apps such as Word and PowerPoint. Meanwhile, the consumer version of the once-ubiquitous communications tool Skype bit the dust in May, with Microsoft telling its users to head to Teams instead.