QR Code Scanner

This QR code scanner reads a code two ways: live through your device's camera, or from an image you already have — a screenshot, a photo, or something you copied. Press Start camera and hold the code inside the frame; the scanner stops the moment it reads one, so it never keeps the camera running behind your back. For an image, drop it on the dashed box, paste it with Ctrl+V (⌘+V on a Mac), or tap the box to pick a file.

Everything happens on your device. The camera feed and your images are decoded by JavaScript running in this page; no frame and no file is uploaded anywhere, and nothing is kept once you leave. That matters more for a scanner than for most tools, because the codes worth scanning are often private: a Wi-Fi password, a two-factor setup key, a boarding pass, a contact card.

What the scanner understands. A QR code holds a short piece of text, and a few conventions give that text a meaning. This page recognises the common ones and lays out what they contain:

• Web links (https://…) — shown in full, with the site's name pulled out, and opened only when you press Open link.
• Wi-Fi networks (WIFI:T:WPA;S:…;P:…;;) — the network name, password and security type, each with its own copy button, so you can join from a laptop that has no camera.
• Contacts in vCard or the shorter MECARD format — name, organisation, phone numbers, emails and address, with a Save contact button that downloads a .vcf file your address book can import.
• Email (mailto: and MATMSG:), phone numbers (tel:) and text messages (sms: and SMSTO:) — the recipient, subject and message, and a button that hands them to your email or messaging app.
• Map locations (geo:) — latitude and longitude, with a link to the spot on OpenStreetMap.

Anything else — plain text, a serial number, a crypto address, an authenticator setup link — is shown exactly as it was encoded, ready to copy. The raw contents are always shown beneath the tidy version too, so nothing the code says is hidden by the formatting.

Scan before you trust. A QR code is just a link you cannot read until it is decoded, which is what makes "quishing" — QR phishing — work: a sticker over a parking meter's code, or a code in an email, sends you to a convincing fake. Unlike a phone camera app, this scanner never follows a link on its own. It shows you the full address first, and it only makes buttons for the web, email, phone, SMS and map formats above. A code pointing at anything else is treated as text, so it cannot be clicked at all.

When a code will not scan. Fill most of the frame with the code and hold still for a second; glare, blur and a code at a steep angle are the usual culprits. For an image, crop close to the code — a code that is a small speck in a large photo is harder to find. Codes printed light-on-dark are read from images too. The scanner reads QR codes only: barcodes on groceries (EAN/UPC), Data Matrix and Aztec codes are different symbologies and are not recognised.

Need to make a code instead? The QR Code Generator writes every format this page reads, and what one writes the other reads back exactly.