Every screen and every control, in the order you meet them. Features that need the one purchase are marked. Nothing here needs an account, and nothing here needs a connection except buying and iCloud itself.
The app opens on one short screen telling you what it does and where your scans go, with a Get Started button. There is nothing to sign up for.
Tap Scan. iOS asks for the camera the first time, and only then. Hold the page in frame and the camera takes the shot itself when it is steady and square; there is a shutter button if you would rather decide the moment. Keep going for a multi page document, then finish, and Pageora straightens each page, cleans it up, reads the text on it and writes one PDF.
If the lens looks dirty, the app says Your camera lens may be smudged before you waste a scan on it. If a finished page came out soft, the document shows This page looks soft with the option to look at it, retake that one page, or keep it.
The first screen is your whole library, newest first, each row showing a thumbnail, the title, the date and the number of pages.
Search documents at the top searches the words inside your documents as well as titles and tags. This is also what makes a document findable from your iPhone's Home Screen search.
The gear at the top left opens Settings. The … button at the top right holds the three things that act on the library as a whole: Select, for choosing several documents to merge or delete at once, Find Duplicates, and Back Up Library. The last two need the purchase.
If you have locked documents they collapse into a single Locked row at the bottom of the list, which asks for Face ID or Touch ID to open.
While the app is free you will see how many of the ten free documents you have left, quietly, under the Scan button, from your eighth document onward. If you are signed out of iCloud a line near the top says your scans are on this device only.
Tap a document to open it. The title at the top can be tapped to rename it. Under that sit the date and page count, a row for tags with Add tag, and a grid of the pages. Tap any page to see it full size.
The toolbar holds two things: Export, and a … menu containing Rename, Sign & Date, Lock, Redact and Delete. That is deliberate. Everything that acts on a single page lives on the page instead, described next.
When a document mentions a date, the app may offer to Add to Calendar. It reads the date from the page and prefills an event for you to check before saving. You can tell it not to suggest anything for that document again.
Drag a page in the grid to reorder it. Press and hold a page for the page level actions: Rotate Left and Rotate Right, Retake, Split from This Page, Move to Document and Delete Page. Splitting turns one document into two from that page onward. Moving sends pages into another document. Both of those need the purchase.
Page editing works on the device that did the scanning, because that is where the original page images are kept. On another device, or after reinstalling, a document reads Editing available on the device that scanned this, and everything else about it still works.
From the … menu, choose Sign & Date. Draw your signature once and the app keeps it for next time; Re-sign replaces it. Drag it where it belongs on the page and pinch to resize, then Apply.
The app is straight with you about what this is: the signature becomes part of the page image. It is not a cryptographic signature, and Redact can remove it later if you put it in the wrong place. Needs the purchase.
From the … menu, choose Redact. Drag to draw a black box over anything you want gone. Move between pages at the bottom, zoom with the plus and minus, and Undo takes back the last box.
The magnifier in the corner turns on find mode. Type a phrase, an account number or a name, and the app tells you how many matches it found and on how many pages, then proposes a dashed box over each one. Add accepts them all at once, and you can tap any single dashed box to leave that one alone. The count is there on purpose: it is how you notice that the recogniser found four of the five you expected. Find mode needs the purchase.
Apply is final. The text underneath is deleted from the document rather than covered, which is the point, and it means there is no undo once you apply. The app says so on the button. Whole lines are blanked, so a little extra text around each match goes too.
The Export button opens one sheet. Along the top, choose what you want out: PDF, Text, Spreadsheet or Receipt. The options underneath change to suit, and the filename you will get is shown at the bottom. Finish with Files to save it, or Share PDF to send it.
PDF is free and is the default. Quality offers Small, Standard and Best: Small for something that has to go through email, Standard for everyday use, Best to keep every detail of the original. Text, Spreadsheet and Receipt pull the words, the tables and the line items out of the document, and need the purchase, as do Archive Copy (PDF/A) for long term storage, Password Protect, and fitting a document to an email size limit.
Password Protect uses the encryption built into Apple's PDF support, at 128 bits. Any PDF reader will ask for the password. It is a real lock, and the app names its strength rather than implying more than that.
Lock sits in the document's … menu. Lock a document and it disappears from the library, from search, from Spotlight and from Siri until you authenticate, collapsing into the single Locked row at the bottom of the list. It relocks itself when the app goes to the background, though not when you merely switch apps and come straight back.
Before you lock anything for the first time, the app explains exactly what this is and is not, and it is worth repeating here: the PDF stays a normal readable file in your own iCloud Drive folder. Locking hides it inside Pageora. It does not encrypt it, and anybody with access to your iCloud Drive can still open it. If you need the file itself protected, export it with a password. Locking needs the purchase, and it needs a device passcode set.
Scanning defaults sets the size preset and the enhancement mode every new scan starts with. Enhancement offers Color, Grayscale and Document B&W; the last is the one to reach for on faint or grey originals, and it makes text recognition noticeably better on them.
Pageora Unlimited shows whether you have bought it, with Restore Purchases underneath. Restore is where you go if you have changed device, reinstalled, or bought it on another Apple Account.
Automation and export holds the two things worth configuring once and forgetting: Filing Rules, which sort new scans by what is in them, and Filename Template, which decides how new documents are named. Both need the purchase.
Privacy restates where everything lives, and About carries the support link and the version number.
Everything you scan is a normal PDF in your own iCloud Drive, in a folder called Pageora, openable in the Files app on any of your devices. Renaming a document in Pageora renames the file. Deleting one deletes it. Deleting a PDF in the Files app is allowed too: next time Pageora opens it notices and tidies the entry away.
Pageora offers Scan Document and Open Document to Shortcuts, so scanning can start from a Home Screen shortcut, from a wider automation, or from the Action button on the iPhones that have one.
On iPad the library and the open document sit side by side, and PDFs can be dragged straight out of the library into another app.