AI Card Scanner

AI Card Scanner

The scanner identifies Magic cards from your phone's camera. Point it at a card, tap once, and you have a match in under a second — including the set, collector number, and whether it's foil. It's not magic (well, it's a little magic), but it's close.

How It Works

Tap the large circle at the bottom of the scanner to capture the current frame. The image goes to Google Gemini's vision model, which reads the art, name, set symbol, and collector number all at once, matches the result against the card database, and drops it into your Queue for review. Nothing touches your collection until you approve it.

You'll know it worked because your phone will vibrate and you'll hear a short beep. A double-buzz means no match was found — try again from a slightly different angle.

Scanning is free and unlimited, for everyone, forever. It's not counted against any AI allowance and it never will be. See AI Features if you want the details on what is and isn't metered.

Auto-Scan

This is the one worth knowing about. Flip on the cyan Auto toggle and you don't have to tap anything — the scanner watches the camera feed, notices when the picture changes enough to mean you've put down a new card, and captures on its own.

In practice that means you can hold your phone in a stand, sit down with a stack, and just flip cards. No tapping between each one. It's the difference between cataloging a shoebox in an evening and giving up halfway through.

The manual capture button switches off while Auto is running, since the two would fight each other. Turn Auto off and it comes back.

The Crop Box

There's an adjustable box on the camera preview with handles at each corner. Drag them to frame just the card. Getting the crop tight around the card — and away from the table, your hand, and whatever else is in the shot — is the single most effective thing you can do to improve match quality on a tricky card.

Setting Up Phone-to-Desktop Scanning

Scanning a whole collection is much more comfortable when your phone does the scanning and your desktop shows the results. Here's the setup:

The QR code dialog closes automatically once the connection is established. If you close the scanner on your phone, just rescan the QR code to reconnect.

Scanner Controls

Capture Button — The large circle at the bottom. Tap to scan. One tap per card.

Torch — The flashlight icon at the top. Flip this on when you're in a dimly lit room or dealing with dark card borders. The scanner automatically skips the brightness boost on captured frames when the torch is active, which prevents glare from washing out the art.

Brightness Boost — Brightens the camera preview for flat, matte cards. Works independently from the torch.

Price Check Mode — A toggle that puts the scanner into read-only mode. It still identifies the card and shows you the price, but nothing gets sent to the queue. Useful when you're at an LGS or a trade table and just want quick price lookups without cluttering your queue.

Tips That Actually Help

Keep the card flat and fully in frame — angled or partially visible cards confuse the model. Good lighting matters more than you'd think; a few seconds adjusting the torch or brightness boost will save you a lot of bad matches. If you're getting a string of misses, try switching which lighting option you're using.

If you scan the same card twice by accident, the duplicate is automatically ignored for 10 seconds. After three failed matches in a row, the scanner pauses automatically — just tap to restart.

What Happens After You Scan

Every card lands in the Queue with a confidence badge — green for high confidence, amber for medium, red for low. High-confidence cards are almost always right. Red ones need a closer look. You can approve everything at once, reject everything, or go card by card. If the AI got it wrong, you can correct it before approving. See the Queue section for the full approval workflow.