QR Code Scanner

A QR code is a link you cannot read. That is the whole problem with them: the only way to find out where one goes is to follow it, by which point you are already there. This reads the code and shows you the contents first.

Two ways in. Point your camera at a code and it reads automatically — no button, no app to install. Or drop in a photo or screenshot, which is what you need on a desktop, or when the code arrived in an email or a document rather than on a wall.

What comes back depends on what the code holds. A link shows its address, broken into the domain and the path, so a lookalike domain is visible before you click anything. A Wi-Fi code shows the network name and the password, along with a reminder that anyone who photographs that code can read it. A contact card, a calendar event, a location or a text message are each pulled apart into readable fields rather than shown as raw text.

Links are only offered as clickable when they are ordinary web addresses. A code carrying a <code>javascript:</code> or <code>data:</code> link is shown and explained but never made clickable, because a scanner that hands you an unreadable link to press is the exact opposite of useful.

Everything happens on your device. The camera feed is read frame by frame inside the page, no video is recorded, and no image is uploaded. That is not a small thing for a tool people point at codes in the physical world.