CardLens - Scan to Contacts
Liang Shao Business iPhoneiPadiPod touch
CardLens - Scan to Contacts is a free Business app for iPhone and iPad by Liang Shao. Requires iOS 26.0. Updated October 8, 2026.
- Price
- Free
- on the App Store
- Size
- 5 MB
- Age 4+
- Updated
- Oct 8
- 2026 · v1.1
Screenshots
About CardLens - Scan to Contacts
Point your iPhone at a business card and the contact fills itself in — name, company, title, email, phone, address and website — ready to save in seconds. All the reading happens on your iPhone. Card images, and the details printed on them, never leave it. No account to create, no ads. NO MORE DUPLICATE CONTACTS Most scanners add a new entry every time. CardLens looks first. If you already have the person, it tells you before it writes anything — and shows you, field by field, what updating them would change. New details are ticked and ready to add. Anything that would overwrite a value you already have starts switched off, shows both versions side by side and what accepting it costs. You make the call; CardLens writes only what you agreed to. Decline the contacts permission and CardLens hands the finished card to the Contacts app's own save sheet: no duplicate check, but the card still gets in. SCAN A WHOLE STACK Work through a stack in one session, a card at a time, and each becomes its own contact to review and save. Pick one of your Contacts lists and the whole pile from a conference is filed into it. If a card carries a QR code with contact details, CardLens reads them straight off. DETAILS THAT ARRIVE INTACT Three numbers come in labelled mobile, work and fax, not as three identical entries, and each is saved exactly as the card prints it, extension and all. A link to LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok or YouTube is filed as a social profile, not dumped in with the websites. A card carrying a company and no person is saved as an organization, not as a nameless record. EVERY FIELD IS YOURS Email, phone, address and website are read straight off the card. Name, company and title are worked out on-device by Apple Intelligence, and every value is checked against the text printed on the card before it is accepted. On a device without Apple Intelligence, the tray below is how you label those three. Each field shows where its value came from, so you know where to look. Anything left over waits in a tray at the bottom — tap a line to file it under the right field, or press and hold to split a line holding two facts, or join one that wrapped. Clearing a field puts its text back in the tray. SEE WHAT IT SAW Tap Recognized Text and the card comes back with every line CardLens read drawn over it, numbered, beside what each line became — so when a value looks wrong, you can tell whether the card was misread or the line was filed under the wrong label. THREE WAYS IN The scan screen opens straight into the camera: a card-shaped window, a shutter, and a light for a dim table. CardLens finds the card's edges and straightens the shot. A stack, or corners to drag by hand, is one tap away beside the shutter. A card someone emailed you, or a screenshot of a signature, comes in from Photos. One saved out of Mail, iCloud Drive or a scanner app comes in from Files. A CONTACT PHOTO, NOT A PHOTO OF PAPER If the card carries a headshot, CardLens can crop to just the face and use that as the contact photo, so the entry looks like the person, not a scanned rectangle. Optional, and off by default. BUILT PROPERLY Cards in other languages are read properly, including Japanese and Chinese company forms and name order — and CardLens itself speaks English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and French. VoiceOver reads every field with its confidence attached, confidence is never signalled by colour alone, and the layout holds at the largest text sizes. CardLens keeps no library of its own: the contact goes into Contacts, nothing about the card stays behind, and one tap opens the new contact there. FREE TO TRY Your first 10 saved contacts are free. After that, one purchase unlocks unlimited scanning for good — no subscription, no sign-up. CardLens collects anonymous usage statistics and crash reports so problems get fixed; you can turn that off in Settings. Neither ever includes card images, contact details, or anything read off a card.
What’s new
Version 1.1 · Updated October 8, 2026
New: save a card straight into a list. On the review screen, Add to List offers the lists you've made in the Contacts app. Pick one and the contact is filed there as it's saved. Your pick stays put while you work through a stack, so every card from one event lands in the same list — and updating someone you already have adds them to it too. Also: View in Contacts now shows the contact edge to edge.
App privacy
The developer, Liang Shao, reported these privacy practices to Apple.
Data Not Linked to You
The following data, which may be collected but is not linked to your identity, may be used for the following purposes:
- Identifiers: Device ID
- Usage Data: Product Interaction
- Diagnostics: Other Diagnostic Data, Crash Data, Performance Data
Used for: Analytics, App Functionality
Alternatives to CardLens - Scan to Contacts
Looking for apps like CardLens - Scan to Contacts? Here are 6 similar apps on the App Store. The highest rated is AI Note Taker - Capsule (4.0/5), and all 6 are free to download.
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| App | Rating | Price | Last updated | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CardLens - Scan to Contacts | – | Free | October 8, 2026 | |
| CardSnap: BizCard Scanner | – | Free | Mar 24, 2026 | Compare |
| Business Card Scanner - AI OCR | – | Free | Oct 15, 2026 | Compare |
| AI Card to Contacts - Scanner | – | Free | Sep 28, 2026 | Compare |
| Business Card Scanner: OCR | – | Free | Oct 27, 2026 | Compare |
| AI Note Taker - Capsule | 4.0 / 5 (1) | Free | Feb 2, 2026 | Compare |
| Business Card Scanner CardScan | – | Free | Sep 9, 2026 | Compare |