ScanLens

ScanLens is an open-source SwiftUI document scanner and receipt scanner app for iOS and macOS — a full-source, production-quality example, universal across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, that turns a photo of a receipt, ID, or note into a searchable, categorized entry entirely on-device. It's part of the same "Lens" family of full-source example apps as BudgetLens, ClientLens, BookLens, and AICompleteChat, all built on DesignFoundation / DesignFoundation Pro.

The pipeline: import a photo (or try a bundled sample) → on-device Vision (VNRecognizeTextRequest) reads the text → on-device Apple Intelligence (LanguageModelSession + @Generable) titles, categorizes, and summarizes it → the result is saved and browsable in a folder/tag workspace assembled from DesignFoundation Pro's Documents UI kit. No server round-trip, no API key, no cloud OCR or LLM cost.

Looking for a real-world SwiftUI OCR app example, a working Vision framework text recognition example, or a buildable reference for on-device Apple Intelligence document classification on both iOS and macOS? This is a full app, not a snippet.

Built With

• DesignFoundation — the free, open-source SwiftUI design system behind every button, text field, and theme in this app.
• DesignFoundation Pro — the premium SwiftUI Documents UI kit (folder sidebar, tag system, note list, and editor) ScanLens's Documents tab is assembled from.
• Apple Vision — on-device OCR via VNRecognizeTextRequest.
• Apple Foundation Models — on-device Apple Intelligence for titling, categorizing, and summarizing scanned text, via LanguageModelSession and @Generable.
• SwiftData — local persistence for scanned documents.

Screenshots

iPhone

Documents (folders & tags)	Import

Mac

The same SwiftUI codebase, unmodified, running natively on macOS — DesignFoundation's cross-platform theming handles the desktop three-column layout automatically, no #if os(macOS) needed in app code.

Documents (sidebar + note list)	Note editor

What it does

• A folder/tag document workspace built from a real design system — DFDocumentBrowserScreen and DFDocumentEditorScreen, fed with real SwiftData-persisted scans instead of fixture data.
• On-device OCR via Vision's VNRecognizeTextRequest — reads text out of any imported photo.
• On-device AI classification via LanguageModelSession + @Generable (Apple Intelligence, iOS 26+ / macOS 26+) — titles the document, sorts it into Receipts / IDs & Cards / Notes / Other, and writes a one-line summary. If the on-device model is unavailable or fails for any reason, the document still saves with the raw OCR text and a heuristic title/category — AI classification is an enhancement, never a requirement to save a scan.
• Three bundled sample documents (a grocery receipt, a parking receipt, a meeting note), rendered on the fly — so the full pipeline is demoable in Simulator or on Mac without needing a camera or a seeded Photos library.
• SwiftData persistence for every scanned document, with pin/delete/edit support round-tripped through the Documents vertical's real callbacks.

Requirements

• iOS 18+ or macOS 15+ (AI classification in the Import flow additionally requires iOS 26+ / macOS 26+ with Apple Intelligence enabled to actually run on-device; OCR, import, and the Documents browser work fully on the iOS 18 / macOS 15 baseline)

• Xcode 26+

• xcodegen (brew install xcodegen) — this repo has no committed .xcodeproj; regenerate it from project.yml

• A DesignFoundationPro license. This is the one intentional gate: the source here is meant to be read and learned from by anyone, but it only actually builds for someone with access to DesignFoundationPro, since the Documents tab is assembled from its Documents vertical rather than built from scratch.

  Without access, package resolution fails outright — you'll see something like this during xcodegen generate + build, or from Xcode's own package resolution:

  error: Failed to clone repository https://github.com/NerdSnipe-Inc/DesignFoundationPro.git:
      remote: Repository not found.
      fatal: repository 'https://github.com/NerdSnipe-Inc/DesignFoundationPro.git/' not found
  

  That's expected, not a bug in this repo: it means your GitHub account isn't on DesignFoundationPro's access list. Grab a license to fix it.

DesignFoundation (the free design-system core) is public and resolves automatically via Swift Package Manager.

Building

git clone https://github.com/NerdSnipe-Inc/ScanLens.git
cd ScanLens
xcodegen generate
open ScanLens.xcodeproj

Build and run the ScanLens scheme (iOS, on a simulator or device) or the ScanLensMac scheme (native macOS app). The app seeds two already-scanned documents on first launch so Documents isn't empty before you've run Import yourself, on either platform.

Architecture

ScanLens/
  ContentView.swift            — two-tab shell: Documents, Import
  Models/
    ScannedDocument.swift      — SwiftData model: title, extracted text, summary, category
    DocumentCategory.swift     — pure category ↔ folder/tag mapping (unit tested)
    SampleData.swift           — first-launch seed data
  Documents/
    DocumentsMapper.swift      — pure ScannedDocument → DFNoteModel/DFFolderModel/DFTagModel
                                  mapping (unit tested)
    DocumentsBrowserView.swift — DFDocumentBrowserScreen + DFDocumentEditorScreen, wired to
                                  modelContext for real save/pin/delete
  Import/
    TextRecognizer.swift          — on-device Vision OCR
    DocumentExtractionEngine.swift — LanguageModelSession + @Generable DocumentExtraction, iOS/macOS 26+
    SampleDocumentImageFactory.swift — renders the bundled sample documents (via ImageRenderer's
                                        cross-platform `cgImage`, no UIKit/AppKit dependency)
    ImportView.swift              — PhotosPicker + sample buttons + pipeline + status UI

A note on API fit

DesignFoundationPro's own composed root for this vertical, DFDocumentsRootView, owns its notes as private @State mutated in place — it's meant to be dropped in with its own fixture data, not driven by an external store. ScanLens instead composes the same two screens DFDocumentsRootView composes internally (DFDocumentBrowserScreen for the folder/tag/list browser, DFDocumentEditorScreen for editing) but wires their callbacks to a real SwiftData modelContext — the same pattern the vertical's own compact-width shell uses, just backed by real persistence instead of fixtures. See DocumentsBrowserView.swift for the full mapping.

project.yml defines two application targets — ScanLens (iOS) and ScanLensMac (macOS) — that both build from the same ScanLens/ source folder. The only platform-specific code needed was using ImageIO's cross-platform CGImageSource instead of UIImage to decode a picked photo, and ImageRenderer's cross-platform cgImage property instead of uiImage to render the bundled sample documents; DesignFoundation's theming and the Documents vertical's own NavigationSplitView/compact-push layout switch handle the rest of the cross-platform adaptation automatically.

Related Projects

• DesignFoundation — the free SwiftUI design system this app (and its UI) is built on.
• DesignFoundation Pro — the premium vertical UI kits (Documents, Analytics, AI Chat, CRM, and more) ScanLens's Documents tab uses.
• BudgetLens — the sibling full-source example app: an on-device AI personal budget tracker, universal across iOS and macOS, built the same way.
• ClientLens — the sibling full-source example app: an on-device AI CRM/client tracker built the same way.
• BookLens — the sibling full-source example app: an on-device AI reading tracker built the same way.
• AICompleteChat — the sibling full-source example app: an on-device AI chat client built the same way.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Note this only covers the code in this repo; DesignFoundationPro is licensed separately (see its own repo).

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Keywords: SwiftUI document scanner app, iOS and macOS OCR app example, receipt scanner SwiftData, Vision framework text recognition example, on-device Apple Intelligence example, Foundation Models Swift example, LanguageModelSession @Generable, universal SwiftUI app iOS and macOS, SwiftUI design system, open source iOS and macOS app example.