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

Same. I use the Notes- Scan documents- all the time for work. I just updated my phone to ios18, and now the files are enormous. FIX THIS, APPLE!

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.

Same issue. This is a BIG problem as I use this feature for work all of the time. There is a work around that is not efficient or doable in the long term. I can resave the document as a smaller size, but this is an additional step for multiple documents scanned daily. Also, switching to black and white does fix the size issue but the quality of the document is horrible and not usable!

Do better Apple and please fix this. Why do updates break things that were working fine...stop fixing it if it isn't broke! Thanks.

Fix it or I’m permanently leaving Apple.

Whoever is responsible for this needs to be fired!

The countdown has begun. You have 30 days (12/6/24) to comply or I’m gone from Apple and moving to Android.

I use these phones for work. I have 165 employees on iPhones. No one is able to scan and email anymore. No matter what we try 30 pages is 24 MB in black & white.

FIX IT!!!

Had many discussions with Apple tech support on this and it is a mystery to them as well. Seems that the document scanner is really just taking a picture and calling it a scan. Or perhaps Tim Cook is trying to sell more iCloud storage. I know that my older iPhone takes smaller scans of the same document (even using the same IOS) which brings me back to the fact that it is simply an image/phone pretending to be a document scan.

Maybe if we complain enough, apple might get around to fixing this. As such it is not usable.

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.

Has anyone figured this out? I just updated to IOS 18 and use the scanner feature all the time for work. Now the document size is too large.

please help thanks!

Try to scan with the Files app instead.

I agree it's a big problem , it use to be nice to scam 24 pages and be able to email them with a 2 MB file size, now if I "scan" three or four documents, it's 40 MB sometimes??? they had a good product and they ruined it for some reason it is unusable hopefully they will fix it or at least put it back to the way it was

You are a lifesaver!!!! Changing to greyscale definitely looks better then black and white and allowed me to email without any issues! I use this daily for work as well. Apple does need to change it back though why fix something that wasn't broken to begin with...

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 !!!

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?

After you updated your IOS to 18 you have destroyed the NOTES App.  It creates excessive file sizes which are unable to be emailed

I believe this discussion is strictly speaking about the latest iOS tier, 18.x.x. What you are referring to is prior to this issue manifesting as there is no longer a paperclip in notes to use to attach files.

That said, I only make occasional phone scans, but they are almost always for work. I’m on iOS 18.2 and I have the same issues as the rest, but also having a problem where the image is made so large that the scan only catches part of the item to be scanned.

[Edited by Moderator]