QR Code Generator

Every code type is just text written in an agreed pattern. A website code holds the address itself. A Wi-Fi code holds a short string that starts with WIFI: and lists the security type, network name and password, a format first documented by the open-source ZXing barcode project and now read by the camera apps on Android and iPhone. A contact code holds a vCard, the same format address books use to exchange contacts by email. The phone reads the text, recognizes the pattern and offers the matching action.

Because the content is stored in the code, the amount you type decides how dense the pattern gets. A short address makes a code with large squares that scans from across a room. A long address with tracking parameters, or a contact card with every field filled in, makes a code with many small squares that needs a closer, steadier camera. If a link is very long, a shorter page address on your own site often gives a cleaner code than anything you could change in the settings.

The codes made here are static: nothing sits between the code and its target, so there is no account to keep alive and no scan counter. That also means the target cannot be edited once the code is printed. Plan the address before you send anything to print.

A few types have their own small traps. A UPI code only needs the payee's UPI ID; leave the amount at zero when the payer should type it, and fill it in when every scan should ask for the same sum, such as a fixed fee. An event code carries times as you typed them, so add the time zone to the title when guests may be in different places. An email code fills in the address, subject and message, but the person scanning still has to press send, which makes it a safe way to collect requests without exposing a form. A map location is only as precise as the coordinates you paste, so copy them from a map app rather than typing them from memory.

QR codes repeat part of their data as Reed-Solomon error correction, so a phone can still read a code with a smudge, a tear or a glare spot on it. The four levels are defined by DENSO WAVE, the company that released the QR code in 1994, and its own error correction page notes that level M is the one most often selected. Higher levels protect more of the data, but they add more squares to the pattern, so the same content gives a denser code.

The Quiet zone is the empty border around the code. The QR specification asks for a margin four modules wide on every side, a module being one of the small squares, and the default of 4 here matches it. Phones use that blank band to find where the code starts, so a code printed tight against a photo or a colored edge often fails even though the pattern itself is fine. Set it lower only when the code will sit on a plain light background with space around it anyway.

Image size sets the width and height of PNG output in pixels. For SVG, PDF and EPS the drawing is a vector, so the number mostly decides the default size when the file is opened; it can be scaled freely after that.

Colors are open under Code color and Background color, and a Transparent background is available for PNG and SVG when the code goes onto a design. Keep the contrast strong: some older scanners also fail on inverted codes, with light squares on a dark background, so test those carefully if you try them.

A good habit before printing is to scan the code at the size and distance people will really use. If it takes more than a moment to lock on, make it bigger, shorten the content, or move it away from shiny or curved parts of the surface. If you also need a print-ready size in centimeters or inches, the pixel converter page turns the pixel width into physical units at your printer's DPI. To change the format of a code image you already have, use the image converter page.

The QR code was released by DENSO WAVE in 1994 and is standardized internationally as ISO/IEC 18004. DENSO WAVE still runs the reference site for the format, with pages on the four error correction levels, on the symbol versions, which grow from 21 × 21 modules at version 1 to 177 × 177 at version 40, and on the history of the code. The version is chosen automatically from the length of your content and the error correction level, so there is no setting for it.

The text layouts for Wi-Fi, contact, email, SMS and location codes are not part of the ISO standard itself; they are conventions that phone makers adopted, most of them written down by the ZXing project. Following them is what lets one code work on both Android and iPhone without a separate scanner app.