Support
Write to hello@papers.rip — answered within a couple of days.
Reporting something that went wrong? Say which macOS version you are on, which scanner you used, and what you expected to happen. If a document came out wrong, the six-character code in its file name tells us which one it was.
Getting started
What do I need to run Papers?
A Mac running macOS 27 with Apple Intelligence available and turned on. Recognition depends on it, and the app will tell you plainly if it cannot run.
Which scanners work?
Any scanner macOS itself supports, over USB or the network — Papers uses the system's own scanning framework rather than its own drivers. If your scanner appears in Image Capture or in Printers & Scanners, it will appear in Papers.
Can I use PDFs I already have?
Yes. Drop a folder of PDFs into the app and it treats them exactly like a fresh scan. No scanner needed.
Reading and filing
A document was split in the wrong place
Papers only ever proposes a grouping. On the review screen you can split a document, merge two, move a page from one to another, or rename anything before saving. Nothing is written to disk until you confirm.
A page came out sideways
Pages are straightened automatically as they arrive, but a sheet with very little text gives the app nothing to go on. Rotate it yourself in the gallery — the page is read again afterwards, so the correction is taken into account.
The same sheet appeared twice
That is caught on purpose: sheets fed through twice are found by comparing what they say. The newer scan goes on to be filed, and the older copy waits in a block of its own, where you can set it aside or put it back.
Where did my scans go after saving?
Into the archive folder you chose, in a folder per category. The scans themselves and the page images are deleted with the session — the finished PDFs are the only thing a save leaves behind. Existing files are never overwritten: a name that already exists gets a numbered suffix, and you are shown this before anything is written.
Subscription
What is free and what is paid?
Scanning is free and stays free: feed paper in, reorder and rotate pages, and save the whole stack as a single PDF. The subscription covers reading — describing every page, finding duplicates, splitting the stack into named documents and filing them.
I paid, and the app still asks me to subscribe
Open the subscription screen and choose Restore Purchase. That checks your Apple Account for an existing subscription, which is also how you carry one over to a second Mac. Make sure you are signed in with the Apple Account you bought it with.
How do I cancel?
Subscriptions are managed by Apple, not by us: System Settings → your name → Media & Purchases → Subscriptions. Cancelling stops the renewal; recognition keeps working until the period you paid for runs out. Refunds are handled by Apple through reportaproblem.apple.com.
Do I lose my documents if I stop paying?
No. The PDFs are ordinary files in your own folder — they are yours whatever happens to the subscription. Without one, the app goes back to scanning and saving stacks as single PDFs.
Privacy
Do my documents leave my Mac?
The images never do. The recognized text of a session goes to Apple Intelligence on Private Cloud Compute for grouping, and nowhere else — there is no server on our end. The full account is in the privacy policy.
Still stuck
Write to hello@papers.rip. It is one developer answering, so it may take a day or two, but every message is read.