According to Microsoft, its most popular document scanning app, Microsoft Lens, is being retired in Android & iOS environments. The phase-out would start on 15 September 2025 and eventually shut down on 15 December 2025. Users are encouraged to shift their workflows to the AI-powered Microsoft 365 Copilot app.
Launched initially in 2015 as Office Lens, the app was a good candidate for document scanning, receipts, whiteboards, and business cards. It supported final outputs to PDF, Word, PowerPoint, or image formats with seamless Microsoft Office integration.
The decision slightly exemplifies another legacy suite of productivity tools giving way to AI-driven platforms.
Why is Microsoft retiring Lens now?
The strategy of Microsoft seems clear: integration of document scanning into Microsoft 365 Copilot to form a sort of unified AI-first productivity hub. Lens, for its time, works well as a scanning tool; yet, from an AI perspective, the app was never modern. Copilot allows document scanning, analysing, extracting key data, and then instantly pushing this to Microsoft cloud services.
Lens, to a great extent, is being retired to streamline Microsoft’s mobile app portfolio, thus cutting redundancy and giving users enhanced AI tools to adopt.
It was stated that Lens, even though a powerful offline scanning tool, is now less in demand. Most customers prefer AI features connected to the cloud that allow them to edit, summarise, and share files.
How will the retirement process work?
Microsoft has set out three phases of its shutdown plan:
- 15 September 2025: Retirement begins. Until November, new downloads are possible.
- 15 November 2025: Lens will have been pulled from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
- 15 December 2025: All scan functionalities have been disabled.
Any existing scan data will still be found on devices with the app installed. However, users are urged to move their data to the cloud before the app’s removal.
What should current Lens users do?
Microsoft has already recommended immediately transitioning to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. On iOS, scans that are stored in the cloud can be accessed via Create → folder icon → My Creations. Android users can get to their files the same way but have to grant All Files Access for local scan retrieval.
At the time of launch, some lens features will not be available within Copilot. Missing tools include saving to OneNote/Word/PowerPoint, business card scanning, Immersive Reader, and read-aloud. Microsoft has not confirmed if or when any of this functionality will return.
For companies that depend greatly on these features, this ultimately may call for a temporary third-party scanning solution.
The global document scanning market shows steady growth
Lens Inc. announces its retirement, by which the global document scanning software market is valued at above USD 4.3 billion in 2025. Analysts foresee a CAGR of 6.1% up to the year 2030, with forces pushing growth being demand for mobile scanning, AI document processing, and cloud storage.
This move on the part of Microsoft will cause an inconvenience of sorts to some users and strengthen the competitive position of the company with AI integration. AI-enhanced scanning will enable translation in real time, automatic filing, and text-to-speech, all of which are set to become the top drivers for market adoption in the next few years.
Rivals like Adobe Scan, CamScanner, and scanning built into Google Drive could snag some of the departing Lens user base. Still, Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem and AI integration give it an advantage in the long run.
Investor outlook remains positive despite app retirement
The retirement of Lens is an investor signal suggesting that Microsoft wants to start committing to an AI-centred strategy- AI-powered productivity apps remain one of the company’s key growth drivers as enterprises adopt such technologies faster.
The transition to Microsoft 365 Copilot would raise subscription revenues and deepen lock-in effects among users with the Microsoft ecosystem. This is also in line with the company continuing to pour investments into cloud productivity tools and AI research.
While it may generate a mixed sentiment in the short term within the user base, market analysts predict this move to be part of a broader plan focused on efficiency and monetisation. With global demand for mobile productivity software projected to top USD 25 billion by 2030, Microsoft continues to be in a rather favourable position.
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Is this the end for standalone mobile scanning apps?
Not entirely. Many of them will continue to fill highly specialised niches by working offline or operating on specialised formats. But now the trend is in favour of AI-enabled platforms that integrate scanning, editing, and sharing within the same environment.
Microsoft’s decision epitomises this evolution, where document scanning in itself would not be considered an isolated activity but part of greater productivity workflows.
From a user’s point of view, there are fewer apps to manage, but that puts plenty of reliance on cloud-based services. For competitors, it is simultaneously an opportunity as well as a challenge for differentiating features and value propositions.
