RIP, Microsoft Lens, a simple little app that’s getting replaced by AI

Sometimes it is nice to have a simple app that does one thing well without much hassle.

Microsoft Lens was that type of app: a mobile document scanner that turned paper documents, business cards, coupons and everything else in easily readable digital files. Now that that app is being stopped, Microsoft says, because it leads its users to his Copilot Ai -Chat app instead.

According to a new support documentLens will be retired from iOS and Android devices from 15 September 2025 and then removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play on November 15, 2025. Existing users can continue to use the scan options of the app up to and including December 15, 2025.

Microsoft Lens (then known as office lens) was first launched in 2015 and evolved from an application that was originally designed for Windows Phone devices. Although the core functionality was comparable to other mobile scanning applications, it did not try to increase users for a certain functionality or push them into a subscription – a rarity in today’s App Store.

Instead, it carried out his task to make any note – handwritten or otherwise -, document, reception, business card or even whiteboard -scraps in the file format of your choice, such as PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel or images. It also offered a variety of built-in filters to improve the resulting image, to relieve the document, to turn into a sharper black and white copy and more.

You can then save the file on one of the Microsoft apps, other online services or your camera plain. It was simple and it worked well.

The upcoming closure of the app was first noticed by the site BLEKING COMPUTERwho points out that users are led to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, which misses all functionality in Lens. While Second pilot Can scan, it does not support the storage of those scans directly to OneNote, Word of PowerPoint, nor does the business card scans save on OneNote. The accessibility functions of Lens such as reading and Immersive reader Integration, notes of the site.

Despite its age, the lens remains fairly popular, after he has achieved more than 322,000 downloads on the Apartment And Google Play According to data from App Intelligence Provider AppFigures in the last 30 days. Since January 2017 it has been downloaded 92.3 million times, according to the company’s data.

Microsoft has not yet responded to a request to comment on his decision to close Lens.