Microsoft Lens PDF Scanner to shut down by December 2025 | Image generated with ChatGPT
The liked Microsoft Lens PDF Scanner app is getting killed soon, with the company trying to push users to the poorly-received Copilot service, that as an additional insult, doesn’t do everything that Lens did.
Microsoft is ending support for one of its highly-rated, much-beloved apps: Microsoft Lens PDF Scanner. The app, which originally premiered as Office Lens, is — or was — a mobile app that captures, edits, and converts documents, whiteboards, and receipts into searchable PDF files.
The sunsetting process is going to be somewhat gradual, and the company plans to start in mid-September. By mid-October, new downloads of Microsoft Lens will be disabled.
In mid-November, the app will be removed from both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. By December 15, Microsoft Lens users will no longer be able to create new scans.
The scans will still be accessible in the MyScans folder. Any scans that were saved to OneDrive will be accessible in MyCreations within the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.
The company is advising users to switch to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. While the app does share many of the same features, as BleepingComputer points out, it does not allow them to save scans directly to OneNote, Word, or PowerPoint — or scan business cards to save them to OneNote.
The replacement also does not feature read-out-loud functionality or Immersive Reader integration. Microsoft assured users that it would continue adding features and improving the capabilities of the Copilot app, but didn’t provide a timetable.
The move is likely done to help funnel holdouts who have yet to download the Copilot app. Whether or not this will actually have the intended effect remains to be seen.
