Janus Scan - Janus

Janus Scan with six scanned pages and a large preview of the first page

A simple, private scanning app for the Brother ADS-1000W, on macOS, Linux and any phone.

One or both sides · multi-page batches · PDF, JPEG, PNG or TIFF · USB and Wi-Fi · scan from your phone

The story behind it is in the blog post Janus Scan: Freeing My Ten-Year-Old Scanner from Windows.

Built and tested on one scanner: the Brother ADS-1000W. Nothing in the code is tied to it, so other scanners with a Linux SANE driver or a macOS ICA driver may well work. Pull requests that add or fix support for other models are welcome, tested on the real scanner.

Why

The ADS-1000W is a great little sheet-fed scanner, but its software is Windows-first. On a Mac or Linux PC you’re left with generic tools that make simple things hard: choosing PDF or JPEG, choosing one side or both, or carrying on when the feeder runs out of paper. Janus Scan puts all of that on one screen, and with Janus Scan Server, on every phone in the house.

It’s named after its author, and the Roman god Janus, with his two faces looking both ways, made it an easy choice for a scanner that reads both sides of every sheet. His two faces are the logo.

See it in action

On a computer

Scanning both sides with blank backs skipped, adding more pages, rotating an upside-down page, dragging pages into order and saving the PDF to a NAS folder

On a phone

Scanning from a phone, long-pressing to drag a page into place, rotating a page full screen and saving to a NAS folder

What you get


A real app on Linux	Brother’s Linux downloads for the ADS-1000W are a scanner driver only, with no app. Janus Scan is a full app on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Linux Lite and CachyOS, as well as macOS.
Scan from any phone	Janus Scan Server runs next to the scanner; phones, tablets and other computers scan by opening a web page, with no app store and no driver. Over HTTPS it installs to the home screen and opens like an app.
One document, every device	Start on the phone, finish on the laptop: every open browser sees the same pages, live.
Fix pages before saving	Reorder by dragging (long-press on a phone), rotate any single page, remove pages, and keep adding batches when the feeder runs out.
Less clean-up	Switches to skip the blank backs of one-sided pages, straighten crooked pages and crop away the scanner background.
Save where the files belong	A NAS folder (NFS or SMB) with its own file name preset, like `Receipts {date} {n}`, or a download to the device.
Faster over Wi-Fi	2.2 s per page side through Janus Scan Server, against 10.1 s with Brother’s macOS driver (color, 300 dpi, both sides).
Small	The macOS app is a 2.8 MB disk image and the Linux app a 2.8 MB `.deb`. The server is a 31 MB container image. The apps are native code (Rust) using the system’s web view, not a bundled browser.
Runs where you do	Desktop app on macOS and Linux; the server under Docker Compose, Kubernetes (Helm chart) or LXC (Proxmox).
Private	No account, no telemetry, no cloud. Pages in progress live in a private temporary folder and are deleted afterwards.

Features

Everything on one screen. Sides, color, resolution, paper size, clean-up and file type, all in the sidebar. Press Space to scan.

Janus Scan ready to scan, with the scanner connected over USB

Multi-page batches. When the feeder runs empty, Janus Scan asks whether you have more pages and adds them to the same document.

The More pages to feed? prompt with Finish and Scan more buttons


Scanning	One or both sides in a single pass · color, gray or black & white · 100–600 dpi · Letter, Legal, A4, A5, business card, receipt
Pages	Live thumbnails and a large preview · drag to reorder · rotate · select several or all, then remove
Clean-up	Skip blank pages · straighten crooked pages · crop to the page
Saving	Multi-page PDF, JPEG, PNG or TIFF · never overwrites an existing file
File name preset	Any text plus `{date}`, `{time}` and `{n}`: `Receipts {date} {n}` gives `Receipts 2026-10-17 001.pdf`
Connections	USB and Wi-Fi, found automatically
Comfort	Light and dark mode · keyboard shortcuts · remembers your settings

Status

Platform	USB	Wi-Fi
macOS	✅ Working	✅ Working
Linux (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Linux Lite, CachyOS)	✅ Working	✅ Working
Janus Scan Server (Docker, Kubernetes, LXC)	Not used: Wi-Fi only	✅ Working

On a Mac, use USB for long documents: Brother’s macOS driver makes Wi-Fi slow (10.1 s per page side against 2.0 s over USB).

Getting it

Install Brother’s scanner driver: the ADS-1000W ICA driver on macOS, or brscan4 on Linux, from support.brother.com.
Install Janus Scan from a release package (.dmg, .deb or the CachyOS package), or build it yourself with sh scripts/install.sh, which needs Rust 1.85+ and Node.js 20.19+.
For phones, run Janus Scan Server next to the scanner with Docker Compose:

SCANNER_IP=192.168.1.50 docker compose up -d --build

The README on GitHub has the full steps, including the Helm chart for Kubernetes, LXC on Proxmox, the command-line tool and troubleshooting.

Tech stack

Rust workspace: scanning through Apple’s ImageCaptureCore on macOS and SANE on Linux, image clean-up, and PDF, JPEG, PNG and TIFF export
Tauri 2 + Svelte for the desktop app; the same UI is built for the server’s web front end
Docker, Helm and LXC packaging for Janus Scan Server

License

MIT. Brother’s scanner driver isn’t part of Janus Scan: it’s Brother’s software under Brother’s own license, downloaded separately. Janus Scan is an independent project, not affiliated with Brother Industries, Ltd.