QR code scanner

When this is useful

Your phone already scans QR codes perfectly well when the code is on a physical thing in front of you. This page is for the cases where that doesn’t work:

• A code already on your screen. In an email, a PDF, a web page or a slide — you can’t point a phone at the screen you’re reading. Screenshot it and drop it here.
• A code you don’t trust. See where it actually goes before your browser goes there.
• Checking your own work. Confirm a code you generated or received encodes exactly what you expected, character for character.
• Reading a non-link code. Wi-Fi credentials, a contact card or plain text, shown as raw text rather than acted on.

QR codes and phishing

A QR code is opaque by design. You cannot look at one and tell where it leads, which is exactly what makes it useful for a poster and useful for a scam. The pattern has become common enough to have a name — “quishing” — and the usual forms are a sticker placed over the real code on a parking meter or restaurant table, or a printed code in a letter or email that leads to a convincing fake login page.

Worth knowing:

• Check the domain, not the page. A copied login page is trivial to make. The address bar is what tells you the truth, and this tool shows you that address before you commit to visiting it.
• Look at physical codes closely. A sticker applied over an original is the most common attack in the wild, and it is usually visible if you look for an edge or a slight misalignment.
• Be suspicious of urgency. A code arriving with a warning about an account closing, an unpaid fine or a parcel held at customs deserves more skepticism than one on a menu.
• Never enter credentials on a page you reached by scanning. If a code leads somewhere asking you to log in, navigate to that site yourself instead.

Making codes, not just reading them

If you got here wanting to create a code rather than decode one, the main generator covers links, Wi-Fi, contact cards, email, SMS, calendar events and plain text — all built in your browser, with no account and no expiry.

Common questions