How to use DocuVisa

Last updated: 25 October 2026

DocuVisa keeps your passports, visas, ID cards, insurance policies and warranties on your phone. Everything below works with no account and no internet connection, except where it says DocuVisa Plus.

Scan a document

On Your documents, tap Scan a document.
Hold the phone over the page. DocuVisa draws an outline around the page as soon as it finds it and takes the picture when the phone is steady, or tap the shutter yourself.
Check the corners on Crop the page and drag one if it is off, then tap Use page.
DocuVisa reads the text on the page, on the phone. Check the type, name and expiry date it suggests and save.

To add a page to a document you already have, open the document and tap Add pages.

Import a PDF or a photo

From the scan screen you can choose a PDF or a picture from your phone instead of using the camera. Every page of a PDF becomes a page of the document, so a whole passport scanned elsewhere comes in at once.

To bring in a list of documents, go to Settings, then Export and import, and import a spreadsheet: one row per document, with its name, type and dates. Pages can be scanned onto them later.

Name, type and tags

Open a document and tap the pencil to Edit details: its type, such as Passport, Visa or Insurance, its name, who issued it, when it expires, and tags of your own. The type picks the icon, and tags are for grouping documents the way you think of them, such as a trip or a person.

To delete or merge several documents at once, press and hold one on Your documents, choose the others, and use the buttons in the header.

Know before it expires

Give a document an expiry date and it shows Expires soon and then Expired on **Your documents. In Settings, under Reminders**, turn on expiry reminders, and DocuVisa reminds you 90, 60, 30 and 7 days before a document expires, and again the day before. A reminder only says how many documents are expiring, never which, because it appears on your lock screen.

Find a document

Type in Search on Your documents. It looks at names, types, tags and any text read from the pages, so a passport number or a policy name finds the document.

One document: open it and tap Share as PDF. The PDF is not encrypted; the app says so first, and it goes only where you send it from your phone's share sheet. The copy the app made is deleted as soon as the share sheet closes.
Everything: in Settings, under Export and import, choose Export everything as PDFs, as pictures of every page, or as a spreadsheet of the details. These are not encrypted either. This works on every plan, including after DocuVisa Plus ends.

DocuVisa Plus

A subscription, from Settings under Subscription, which needs sign-in with Apple or Google. It adds:

Encryption of the documents on your phone, with the key held in the phone's secure hardware, and the app lock, which uses the fingerprint, face or passcode you unlock the phone with. DocuVisa has no password of its own.
A recovery phrase of 12 words, shown when you turn on encryption. It is the only way to open an encrypted export or backup on another phone. Write it down and keep it apart from the phone; nobody can recover it for you, including us.
Encrypted export, from Export and import: a copy only your recovery phrase opens.
Cloud backup, in Settings under Cloud backup: encrypted copies in your own Google Drive or iCloud Drive, and sync between your own phones. See the next section.

Ending the subscription never deletes, locks or hides a document you already have.

Cloud backup

Cloud backup is part of DocuVisa Plus. Your documents are encrypted on the phone and the encrypted copies go to your own Google Drive or iCloud Drive, in a folder called DocuVisa. They count against your own Drive or iCloud space. DocuVisa never holds them, and Google and Apple cannot read them, because only your 12 words open them.

Choosing where. In Settings under Cloud backup, turn on Back up my vault.

If you signed in with Google, you can choose Google Drive, and DocuVisa asks Google for access to the files and folders it makes itself, and nothing else in your Drive.
On an iPhone you can choose iCloud Drive, which needs iCloud Drive turned on in your phone's settings, under your name, then iCloud.
If you signed in with Apple, iCloud Drive is the one choice.

One place for the whole account. Every phone of your account backs up to the same place. The first phone to turn backup on chooses; your other phones follow without asking. Phones that back up to the same place keep each other's documents up to date, and when two phones change the same document you keep both copies.

Android and iCloud. An Android phone cannot reach iCloud Drive. So iCloud is offered to a Google account only while no Android phone backs up to it. If your account backs up to iCloud, an Android phone that turns backup on is told to ask an iPhone of the account to move the backup to Google Drive first.

Moving the backup. Where both places are offered, Move the backup to copies everything to the other place first, and erases the old one only once everything is there. Your other phones follow the next time they back up.

Waiting for iCloud. On iCloud, the app writes the files and iPhone uploads them on its own. Until iCloud says they are uploaded, the card says Everything is written. Waiting for iCloud to finish uploading it. and a document does not count as backed up. Leave the phone on Wi-Fi and power and it finishes by itself. If iCloud is full, the app says so: free some space in iCloud.

Space. On Google Drive the app checks your free Drive space before it starts and tells you if the backup will not fit. iPhone does not tell the app how much iCloud space is left, so on iCloud you only find out when iCloud refuses an upload.

Reconnect Google Drive. If Google no longer lets DocuVisa into your Drive, for instance after you removed its access or changed your password, the card shows Reconnect Google Drive. Tap it and allow access again. Nothing is lost meanwhile; the backup carries on from where it stopped. Signing out of DocuVisa makes the phone forget the access, and the backup itself stays where it is.

Keeping one document off. Any document can be kept on the phone only.

Erasing the backup. Erase the backup removes the DocuVisa folder from your Drive or iCloud. It asks you to sign in again first. Your documents on the phone stay, and the account stays. Deleting your DocuVisa account does not erase the backup, because it is yours; the app offers to erase it first.

If Plus ends. Nothing new is backed up, but you can still restore and erase.

Moving to a new phone

With DocuVisa Plus: on the new phone choose I have a recovery phrase, then **From Google Drive or iCloud Drive**, sign in with the account you backed up from, and type your 12-word recovery phrase. DocuVisa reads the backup from that account's Google Drive or iCloud Drive and brings every document back. You need both the account and the words. A backup on iCloud can be restored only on an iPhone; one on Google Drive, on either kind of phone. If the phone already has its own encrypted vault, it cannot take another backup: restore on a phone that has none. Or restore an encrypted export, with the same phrase.
Without: export everything as PDFs on the old phone and import the PDFs on the new one.

Languages

DocuVisa follows your phone's language in English, German, Spanish, French, Turkish, Hindi, Chinese (simplified), Indonesian, Vietnamese, Russian, Portuguese (Brazil), Arabic, Urdu and Persian, and can be set to another in Settings under Language. Switching between a language read from the left and one read from the right, such as Arabic, restarts DocuVisa once, so that every screen is laid out the new way.

Help

To send an idea for the app, use Share an idea in Settings: it sends the words and nothing about you. For anything about your account or your data, use the contact form, which needs no app.