How to Send a Fax From Your Phone
Sending a fax from a phone sounds like it should be as simple as dialing, but a smartphone cannot place a fax call — the number you would dial answers with a modem tone, not a voice line. What the phone in your pocket can do is photograph or scan a document and hand it to an online fax service, which then makes the fax call for you. That works the same on any modern phone, whether it runs iOS or Android.
Why can't I just dial a fax number from my phone?
A fax number sits on the phone network, but it expects the screeching handshake of a fax modem, not a person or a smartphone. If you dial it from a cell phone you hear noise and nothing transmits, because your phone has no way to encode a page into that signal. Bridging the gap is the job of an online fax service: you upload the document from the phone, and the service converts it and completes the fax call to the recipient.
How to send a fax from your phone
- 1Turn your document into a PDF by using your phone's scanner (Notes on iPhone, Google Drive on Android) or by opening a PDF you already received.
- 2Open your phone's browser, go to Send FAX Mail, and start the 7-day trial; verify your email so you can send.
- 3In Send FAX Mail, tap the upload button and choose the PDF from your phone's files.
- 4Enter the recipient's fax number with the correct area code.
- 5Tap Send and keep the tab open until it confirms the fax is on its way.
- 6Save the confirmation email as your proof of delivery.
Before you send
A scanned PDF almost always faxes better than a quick camera snapshot because the scanner corrects the angle and lighting that make handwriting hard to read. Because the fax runs on our servers, your phone only needs a working data connection, not a strong one — a single page uploads in seconds. If your document is more than a few pages, combine them into one PDF so the recipient gets them as a single transmission.
Send a fax from your phone — FAQ
Any phone with a web browser and a camera can do it, which covers essentially every smartphone from the last decade. The phone's age does not matter because the actual faxing happens on our servers; the handset is just capturing the page and uploading it.
No. The whole process runs in the mobile browser, so there is nothing to download and no app permissions to grant. You visit the site, upload your PDF, and send, which keeps your phone's storage and settings untouched.
Your phone is the scanner. The Notes app on iPhone and Google Drive on Android both include a document-scan mode that photographs the paper and turns it into a crisp PDF, which is exactly the format a fax needs.
No — the fax arrives looking like any other fax, printed on their machine or landing in their inbound system with your cover page on top. There is no indication it originated from a mobile phone rather than a traditional fax machine.
Send your fax in minutes
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