Typically it’s good to have a easy app that does one factor properly with out quite a lot of fuss.
Microsoft Lens was that kind of app: a cellular doc scanner that turned paper paperwork, enterprise playing cards, receipts, and anything into simply readable digital information. Now that app is being discontinued, Microsoft says, because it directs its customers to its Copilot AI chat app as an alternative.
In line with a brand new assist doc, Lens can be retired from iOS and Android gadgets beginning on September 15, 2025, then faraway from the Apple App Retailer and Google Play on November 15, 2025. Present customers will be capable to proceed to make use of the app’s scanning capabilities via December 15, 2025. After that date, no new scans can be potential, however entry to prior scans will stay within the app so long as it stays on the consumer’s machine.
First launched in 2015, Microsoft Lens (then generally known as Workplace Lens) developed from an utility initially designed for Home windows Telephone gadgets. Whereas its core performance was just like different cellular scanning functions, it didn’t attempt to upcharge customers for sure performance or push them right into a subscription — a rarity in at the moment’s App Retailer.
Picture Credit:Microsoft
As an alternative, it carried out its activity of turning any notice — handwritten or in any other case — doc, receipt, enterprise card, and even whiteboard scribbles into the file format of your selection, like PDF, Phrase, PowerPoint, Excel, or photographs. It additionally provided a wide range of built-in filters to reinforce the ensuing picture, lighten the doc, flip it right into a sharper black-and-white copy, and extra.
You could possibly then save the file to certainly one of Microsoft’s apps, different on-line companies, or your digicam roll. It was easy, and it labored properly.
The app’s impending shutdown was first noticed by the positioning Bleeping Laptop, which factors out that customers are being directed to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, which lacks all of the performance present in Lens. Whereas Copilot can deal with scanning, it doesn’t assist saving these scans on to OneNote, Phrase, or PowerPoint, nor does it save enterprise card scans to OneNote. It additionally lacks Lens’ accessibility options like read-out-loud and Immersive Reader integration, the positioning notes.
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Regardless of its age, Lens stays pretty standard, having pulled in over 322,000 downloads on the App Retailer and Google Play over the previous 30 days, in line with knowledge from app intelligence supplier Appfigures. Since January 2017, it has been downloaded 92.3 million occasions, the agency’s knowledge exhibits.
Microsoft has not but responded to a request for touch upon its determination to close down Lens.
