What you get
The raw text inside the code, a plain-English guess at what it is, and the number of bytes it holds. Links are shown as text so you can read the domain before deciding to open it.
What it reads
- Photos, screenshots and your camera. Upload or drop an image, or point your camera at a code.
- Inverted codes. Light modules on a dark background decode as well as the usual dark-on-light, so dark-mode codes work (see inverted and dark mode QR codes).
- Eleven kinds of content, labeled for you: web links, Wi-Fi networks, vCard and MeCard contacts, email, text messages, phone numbers, map locations, calendar events, Bitcoin payment requests, and plain text.
- Wi-Fi details in full. A Wi-Fi code shows its network name and password as plain text, so you can read a saved network’s password without joining it.
- The size of what’s inside: the payload in bytes, and how many pixels the code spans in your image.
- Nothing is opened or sent. Decoding runs in your browser; the image never leaves your device, and a link is only displayed, never followed.
Scanning a code that’s on your own iPhone screen? The iPhone Camera can’t, but this can: take a screenshot and drop it in. The guide to scanning a QR code from a screenshot covers every way to do it, and how to scan a QR code on iPhone covers the camera route.
In practice
A QR code on a parking meter, a poster or a delivery note is just a sticker. Anyone can put one there. Read the address before you open it. The security explainer covers the other checks.
Try it yourself
Curious what the decoder is doing? It finds the three finder patterns, reads the format bits to learn the mask and error-correction level, unmasks the data, and runs Reed–Solomon correction before handing you the text.