Why are my document scans so large After iOS 18 update?

After a lengthy discussion with Apple support, I have found the fix for Notes scans producing unusable large PDFs in iOS 18:

1. Open notes
2. Select option “scan” (from the top right circle with 3 dots)
3. When the camera opens to scan, the 3rd top menu option from the right is the 3 overlapping circles indicating filters. Select “filters”
4. Select “greyscale”
5. Scan as usual. This works for both manual and automatic scans.

Using this simple setting change turned a single black and white scanned page from 5.1Mb to 973k.

When scanning multiple pages as I am doing, this will allow for easy email attachment or compression that is effective or both.

I requested that apple release official guidance on this issue but for now…the directions are here.

I think I found the difference. Everything is scanning in full color now. When I tried a 3 page test scan it came in at 4.4 MB. Then I found the Filters icon (three interlocking circles). When I changed it to Black & White it was 75 K, but looked awful. I changed ti to Grayscale and it was 631 K and look like it used to.

Try that and see what your milage is.

Open Notes app,

Create a new note,

Press the paperclip icon and select Scan Documents from the list,

At the top of the screen, press the three interlocking circles icon,

Change from the default Color to Grayscale,

Continue to scan as normal.

The resulting file size is just under 30% of the files size that would have been created if the default Color is left on.

Okay, after reading all the comments and I went into my notes I clicked on the document and clicked on view document and one by one I changed it to grayscale and it worked. My 94.5 doc went down to 22 and it is all clear. I finally sent to my emails no problem. Yeah!!! I too depend on my notes scanner to send out documents. When u click on your document in view three dots will show up on that document click on those and go to filter and change from Color to grayscale it really makes a huge difference. Thankyou for that tip about the grayscale. It really is an easy switch. Have a great day everyone.

Try this:

scan a doc thru notes

save.

then click on drop down and click on “View as”. Change setting to medium or small.

and or click on top right hand icon and set to any size you want. this option should set future scans.

It worked for me. Let me know if it works for you. :-)

Thank you so much! This helped me with my scans. I use the Notes scanner a lot for work, and it was driving me crazy that I couldn’t send my scans due to the increased size!

I had a 10 pg scan that went from 40.5 MB to 12.8 MB when I changed to Grayscale.

ps make sure all documents are on the greyscale. One of my documents changed only partial went into the grey scale leaving some coloured ink and I had to go back to make sure all text was changed and pics as well. Make sure NO coloured ink is on any of the documents scanned. Hope this continues to help until apple fixes this issue. Have a great day

Same here. I often use the notes app to scan documents. Sometimes I transfer those documents from icloud to windows.

In Windows I usually do a "Microsoft Print to PDF" from Acrobat Reader. Just did this with a ~24 Mb multi page document (A4 pages) which after Print to PDF was < 3 Mb.

In the Print Dialog however what I saw was that "Shrink oversized pages" was active. When I set it to "actual size" the frame to print was way smaller then the actual page size. Could have been almost A1! Well... selecting "Choose page size by PDF page source" would give a size of more than 8 x 11 inches - would be close to A0 then, wouldn't it? Why should a scan of an A4 page result in PDF pages in the size of posters?

I also have run into gargantuan PDF file exports from Apple programs as well, both in Notes and in Pages. I tried various export options within the Apple ecosystem with no success. I now export PDFs from Apple, upload the PDFs to I love PDF dot com ( www.ILovePDF.com ) where I can compress PDF files to manageable sizes for free.

This has been broken since at least iOS 17, or longer.

The issue is they are not scanning as 8.5x11 sized PDF files anymore, but huge high res 30x39 sized color images.

And changing the color to “greyscale” or “black and white” is not a solution as they’re still going to be technically images and still 30x39 footprints making them large MB files instead of smaller KB files when only one or two pages are scanned. Those should be 200 KBs at most, not 11 MBs.

It’s ridiculous that it’s still happening, and Apple should have fixed it years ago.

So many people use the Notes App to scan documents for work or applications, and I always have to manually convert their documents to 8.5x11 sizes and make them low res with Adobe Pro to be able to upload them into our system.

Sick of it.

Use scanning in Files App . I just discovered this a month ago. Instead of scanning from Notes, scan from Files and it works perfect. Hope this helps.

Use scanning in Files app worked for me. I previously used Notes to scan and then ran into same issue as you. Scanning can be done thru Files app now. Hope it works for you as it did for me.

I had this same issue scanning through Notes app previously. Now, use the Files app to scan and it works fine.

Same issue, 24 pages, 90mb file! Download scanner pro app, same color scan is now 10mb. Until Apple fixes the issue, easier to use a different app!!

I spoke with a level 2 tech support at Apple. Apparently Apple tech folks are not monitoring the postings here. She was unaware of the issue (as she personally had an older iPhone and has not heard even internal discussion of this issue). I had asked her to document and escalate. Bottom line - rather than posting here, call apple tech support to register a complaint and ask to escalate !!!