User Guide

How end users interact with Scanly. This describes app behavior, not implementation.

First launch

1. App opens to the onboarding intro screen.
2. User completes onboarding → lands on Home.
3. On subsequent launches, onboarding is skipped.

Scanning a new document

From Home

Home quick actions are Scan, Import, and Folder. Only Scan opens the camera.

1. Tap Scan. A suggested name is already filled in. Keep it, tap the clear icon to type your own, or tap Suggest name to cycle formats, then the camera session opens.
2. The first time, Android asks for camera access. If you deny, Scanly stays on an in-app prompt so you can allow it again. If you block camera permanently, Scanly explains that and offers Open Settings — it does not jump to Settings on first open.
3. Point the camera at a physical document. Scanly filters out many phone screens and non-document rectangles before drawing edges.
4. Live overlay shows detected page edges and quality hints. For open books, frame a single dominant page when possible.
5. Tap capture (or use auto-capture when stable).
6. Capture additional pages or finish the session.
7. App navigates to document detail with all captured pages.

Import opens the gallery picker (up to 10 images; see below). Folder opens folder creation with a suggested name.

Home shows the four most recently updated documents. Tap a row to open it, or See all to browse the full Library. Recent files and folders use the same presentation as Library.

From Library

Same scan flow — create a new document from the Library FAB menu.

Library opens in a document grid. Use the grid/list controls beside Last modified to change layout, and tap the sort label for other ordering options. All includes documents in folders; a folder chip filters to its members. Folders opens folder management. Tap the magnifying glass for a separate search screen that always includes both documents and folders. Search matches names, including documents inside folders; returning to Library keeps its filters independent of the search query.

The list layout joins compact rows on one shared card background with internal dividers, full-page thumbnails, filenames, page counts, and relative dates such as Today. Grid items do not display document tags. The overflow action stays within each card, and tapping a grid tile highlights only that tile's rounded bounds.

Importing from gallery

Start a new document

1. On Home, choose Import from gallery in the FAB menu.
2. Select up to 10 images.
3. Each image is processed through the same pipeline as a camera capture.
4. Land on document detail with imported pages.

Add pages to an existing document

1. Open document detail.
2. Choose import from gallery.
3. New pages are appended to the document.

Reviewing and editing pages

Page preview

1. From document detail, tap a page tile (portrait paper preview with a page number).
2. Page preview opens — swipe between pages.
3. Pinch or double-tap to zoom. Double-tap again, or use the fit-to-screen action, to reset the image.
4. The zoom level appears only while the page is enlarged.
5. Tap edit to open the page editor.

Page editor

1. Tap Filters for a full-screen picker with a large live preview of each preset on the cropped page, then Done. Color looks stay close to the photo you captured; scan looks (Grayscale, B&W, Faded Text) still whiten paper. Retake or delete from the editor toolbar as needed.
   • Vivid — punchy color for posters, covers, photos.
   • Screen — photos of monitors, laptops and phones: removes moiré, glare haze and screen color cast; keeps dark mode dark.
2. Tap Adjust (next to Filters) to change the Intensity of the filter (0–150 %; 100 % is the default look, 0 only evens out lighting) and fine-tune brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness on a live cropped preview. Use reset in the adjust screen to clear customizations.
3. Tap Crop to open the crop screen. Use AI Detect to find the document automatically, rotate with Left / Right, drag the four corner handles, use Reset to restore the starting crop, then Done to apply crop and rotation.
4. Back on the editor, tap the check mark to save filter and adjustment changes — processed image and thumbnail regenerate from the raw capture.
5. Retake — opens camera in replacement mode; after capture, returns directly to the editor.

Reorder and delete

From document detail:

• Long-press and drag a page tile to reorder when the document has more than one page.
• Open a page to review it; edit, retake, share, and delete live on that review chrome — not as buttons on every tile.
• Rename or delete the document from the header overflow. The current name is filled in; tap clear to type a new one.

Organizing with groups

Create a folder

1. Open Library → Folders filter, or use create action on Home/Library.
2. Create a new folder. A suggested name is filled in by default. Keep it, tap clear to type your own, or tap Suggest name to cycle date-based formats. Duplicates are avoided automatically.

Add documents to a group

• From document detail → assign to a group.
• From group detail → add existing documents.

Browse a group

1. Tap a group on Home, Library, or Folders tab.
2. Group detail shows all member documents.
3. Rename, delete the group, or remove documents from it.

Ungrouped documents

Documents without a groupId appear alongside foldered documents in Library's All view. A folder chip shows only documents assigned to that folder.

Exporting and sharing

Single document

From document detail:

Before saving or sharing a PDF, choose:

• optional password protection (enter and confirm a 4–64 character open password)
• no page number, or a number at the lower left, bottom center, or lower right
• auto orientation per scanned page, portrait, or landscape
• auto fit, A3, A4, A5, B4, B5, Letter, Tabloid, Legal, Executive, Postcard, American foolscap, or European foolscap
• no, small, or large margins

When password protection is enabled, send the password to the recipient separately from the PDF.

Group export

From group detail:

Merged and zipped group PDFs use the same advanced PDF options. In a merged PDF, page numbering runs continuously across the group. In a ZIP, numbering restarts at 1 in each document.

Saved exports go to Downloads/Scanly by default. Change the base folder from Settings → Storage & backup. Scanly creates unique filenames rather than replacing an existing export.

Library search and sort

1. Open Library.
2. Documents and folders show a page-shaped cover, title, and compact metadata (page count and date, or document/page counts for folders).
3. Tap a card to open it. Rename, move, delete, or remove-from-folder are on the card’s overflow menu or a long-press menu — not as always-visible icon rows.
4. Type in the search field to filter documents and groups by title.
5. Switch filter pills: All, Folders, Documents.
6. Change sort order (name or date, ascending or descending).

Settings

The main Settings list is a short hub. Open a row for the full controls.

Appearance

1. Open Settings → Appearance.
2. Choose System, Light, or Dark. Applied immediately and persisted.
3. Optionally enable Pure black for true black surfaces in dark theme (helps battery on AMOLED displays).

Document detection

1. Open Settings → Document detection.
2. Automatic model selection is on by default: Scanly times Lite/Standard/High on this device and picks responsive live + accurate post models. Turn it off to choose Live preview and Post-processing models manually (Lite, Standard, High, Accurate).
3. Keep Physical-document gate on to reject screens and non-documents before edge detection (recommended). Turn it off only for troubleshooting.
4. Open Model benchmark to run your own photos through the gate and all corner models and review timings (local-only; nothing is uploaded).

Storage usage

Open Settings → Storage & backup to view library, export-cache, database, and archive-workspace usage, clean empty items, or clear all data.

Save location

1. Open Settings → Storage & backup.
2. Tap Change folder and grant Scanly persistent access to a base folder.
3. Normal exports are saved in that folder; backups are kept in its lowercase backup child.
4. Tap Reset default to return to Downloads/Scanly and Downloads/Scanly/backup.

Back up the library

1. Open Settings → Storage & backup and wait for the size/free-space check.
2. Back up library is enabled only when the destination is writable and has enough reported space.
3. Confirm the privacy and duration warning. Scanly continues in the background and shows progress.
4. The result is an exact Scanly-library-*.scanly snapshot in the backup folder. Compression is not encryption.

Restore a backup

1. Tap Restore. Scanly opens the configured backup folder; select a .scanly file.
2. Choose Merge as copies to preserve current items, or Replace current library.
3. Scanly validates checksums, paths, relationships, format version, and staging space before committing changes.

Clear all data

1. Tap Clear all data in Settings.
2. Confirm the destructive action.
3. All documents, pages, groups, files, export cache, and thumbnails are removed.
4. Cannot be undone.

FAQs and licenses

Open Settings → FAQs or Settings → Open-source licenses for bundled support content.

Check for updates

Manually checks the update channel built into the installed app. GitHub builds compare against the latest GitHub release and open its release page. Play Store builds use the Google Play in-app update flow.

Home-screen widgets and quick actions

Add a widget

1. Long-press an empty area on the Android home screen → Widgets.
2. Find Scanly and choose:
   • Scanly actions — Scan · Import · QR · Library
   • Scanly Scan — one-tap camera scan
   • Scanly QR — open the QR tool
3. Place the widget on the home screen.

Launcher quick actions

Long-press the Scanly app icon to open shortcuts for Scan, QR, Import, and Library.

What each action does

If onboarding has not finished yet, the action waits until onboarding completes, then continues.

Tools

Open the Tools tab for QR and offline PDF utilities. Pick a PDF from the device or the Scanly library.

When a PDF is ready, preview it in Scanly, then save or share.

Permissions

Camera is optional at the hardware level — the app installs on devices without a camera but scanning requires one.

Related docs

• features.md — complete feature inventory
• ../architecture/navigation.md — route and flow diagrams
• ../processing/export.md — export pipeline details