Native iOS features

Build an iPhone app with the camera and scanning

Borel builds iPhone apps that take photos and scan with the camera. Describe what your app should capture, and Borel writes it in Swift with Apple's own camera tools and VisionKit, which reads printed text and scans documents straight from the camera. Pictures can stay on the phone or go to your app's cloud.

Ideas

What you can build with camera and scanning

A few apps people make with it. Describe yours in your own words.

  • A plant diary

    A photo of each plant, kept as a timeline you can scroll back through.

  • A recipe scanner

    Point the camera at a cookbook page and keep its text as a recipe.

  • A receipt keeper

    Scan receipts into clean pages, sorted by month.

  • A collection catalogue

    Records, plants or trainers, each with its own photo and notes.

Try it

A prompt to start from

Copy it, or start with it and change it to fit your idea.

The prompt
“A plant diary: I take a photo of each plant and it keeps a timeline of photos per plant, with the date under each one.”

From words to your iPhone

Three steps, no code

  • 1

    Describe it

    Say what the app does in plain words, or start from the prompt above. No code, and no Mac.

  • 2

    Watch it build

    Borel writes the Swift, compiles it with Xcode on its own Mac and opens it in the iOS Simulator, streamed into your browser.

  • 3

    Put it on your iPhone

    Borel Companion installs it over a cable the first time, then over Wi-Fi, and while it runs it puts each new version on by itself.

How Borel handles it

Written in Swift, with Apple's own frameworks

What Borel takes care of for you, so the feature works the way iPhone owners expect.

  • Photos with the camera

    The app opens the iPhone's camera when someone taps, and iOS asks first with a sentence Borel writes for your app.

  • Text and documents

    VisionKit's scanner reads printed text live through the camera, and Apple's document camera turns paper pages into clean scans.

  • Always a way in

    Where there's no camera, the app offers the photo library instead, so it keeps working everywhere.

The iOS Simulator in your browser has no camera, so there the app lets you pick from its photo library. On your iPhone, with Borel Companion, the real camera and scanner open.

Your Apple ID

Works with a free Apple ID

Yes. Borel Companion puts the app on your own iPhone with a free Apple ID, which keeps up to 3 of your apps there, and Companion renews them every 7 days for you.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Apple's VisionKit scanner reads printed text through the camera, so an app can turn a page, a label or a receipt into text.

Yes. Apple's document camera finds the edges of the page and saves a clean, flat scan, the same scanner the Notes app uses.

Wherever your app needs them: kept on the iPhone, or, with sign-in, uploaded to the cloud Borel runs for your app so they show on any device.

Yes. iOS asks the first time someone takes a photo, with your app's own sentence saying why, and the rest of the app keeps working if they say no.

Just say what the app should photograph or scan, or choose Camera from Device in the chat's + menu.

Build your app with camera and scanning

Start from the prompt above, change it to fit your idea, and Borel builds it while you watch.