Both hands should be on the book.

Auto-shoot watches for the page to settle and fires by itself, so the only thing you do is turn pages. That falls apart the moment you have to hold the phone. Anything that keeps the camera still above the book works — here are three, cheapest first.

1. Free · a stack of books

   Lean the phone against a stack next to the one you are scanning, camera over the gutter. Works, and it is how most first scans happen. The tradeoff is that you will nudge it, and a nudge costs you a page.

2. Best · an overhead arm

   A gooseneck or articulated arm on a weighted base, clamping the phone face-down. Set it once and scan all afternoon. This is the rig in the illustration on the front page.

   Roughly $20–40. What to look for is below.

3. On a Mac · Continuity Camera

   Your iPhone becomes the camera and the Mac shows the capture on a big screen, which makes the crop and the motion meter much easier to read. No cable.

Put it on the home screen first.

In a browser tab, the address bar sits on top of the camera and steals the part of the screen you most need. Installed, capture fills the phone. There is no App Store step and nothing to download — it is the same app, without the browser around it.

1. Sign in before you install. Do this first, in Safari. An installed app gets its own private storage, separate from Safari — so an unsigned shelf does not follow it across and the app opens empty. Signing in first attaches your existing scans to your account, and the account travels.
2. Open OWLscan in Safari on the iPhone. Chrome on iOS cannot install to the home screen; only Safari can.
3. Tap the Share button — the square with an arrow out of the top, in the bottom toolbar.
4. Scroll and choose Add to Home Screen, then Add.
5. Open it from the icon. It launches with no address bar and no tabs. Grant the camera again the first time you scan — permissions do not carry over from Safari either.

On Android, Chrome offers “Install app” in the ⋮ menu, or prompts you directly. On a desktop, Chrome and Edge show an install icon at the right end of the address bar — useful with Continuity Camera, since it gives the capture screen the whole window.

What to look for in a stand.

Three things decide whether a stand is usable for books, and price is not one of them.

Search terms that find the right category: overhead phone mount, gooseneck phone stand, copy stand, or document camera arm. Purpose-built phone scanning stands exist too and cost more; for a book on a table, a plain overhead arm does the same job.

Use your iPhone as the Mac’s camera.

You need an iPhone XR or newer and macOS Ventura or newer, signed into the same Apple Account, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on for both. Nothing to install.

1. Mount the iPhone above the book, rear camera facing down, and leave it locked. Continuity Camera only offers itself when the phone is still and not in use.
2. On the Mac, open OWLscan and start a scan.
3. When the browser asks for camera access, choose Allow. In the settings sheet, pick iPhone Camera from the camera list. If it is not there yet, wake the phone and press the refresh button beside the list.
4. Frame the spread, drag the crop corners to the page edges, and turn pages. The Mac screen shows each shot landing.

Safari and Chrome both work. If the camera list stays empty in Chrome, the block is usually macOS privacy rather than the browser: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Camera, and switch the browser on.