ScanMole turns office and archival paperwork into searchable PDFs on Linux. It offers a command-line scanning engine and a GTK4/libadwaita desktop frontend, with batch duplex scanning, blank-page removal, OCR, automatic page sizing, deskewing and PDF/A output by default. It detects page sizes, crops pages and can straighten skewed scans. The CLI includes filename templates, defined exit codes and a versioned JSON event protocol for frontends or other integrations. It works with scanners supported by SANE, including driverless eSCL devices through sane-airscan; the project lists tested models from Brother, Canon, Epson and ScanSnap. ScanMole is free and licensed under GNU GPL version 3.0 or later. It requires Python 3.12 or later and relies on distribution-provided tools including SANE, img2pdf, ocrmypdf and Tesseract. Installation is documented for Debian 13 or later, Ubuntu 24.04 or later and Fedora. The tool is aimed at everyday paperwork, not photo or image scanning. On the tested ScanSnap iX100, duplex requests scan only the front side and produce a warning.
Who it is for
ScanMole suits Linux users digitizing office or archival paperwork, including people who want to use a desktop interface or automate scanning through the CLI. It is not aimed at photo or image scanning.
What is good
- Creates searchable PDFs with OCR.
- Supports batch duplex scanning and blank-page removal.
- Produces PDF/A output by default.
- CLI offers filename templates and a versioned JSON event protocol.
- Works with SANE-supported scanners, including driverless eSCL devices.
What to know first
- Requires Python 3.12 or later.
- Installation support starts at Debian 13 and Ubuntu 24.04.
- ScanSnap iX100 duplex requests scan only the front side.
Verdict
ScanMole combines desktop and command-line scanning for Linux paperwork workflows, with OCR and PDF/A output. Check its Linux and Python requirements, and note the documented duplex limitation on the tested ScanSnap iX100.
Compared on document scanning software
- Free plan
- Yes
- Scanner support
- Yes
- Camera capture
- No
- Batch scanning
- Yes
- Searchable PDF
- Yes
- Supported platforms
- linux
- Export formats
- PDF, PDF/A
