Scan a QR code from your computer
Reading a QR code with a phone is easy: point the camera and you're done. The problem shows up when the code is on your computer screen, inside an email, in a PDF, or in a screenshot someone sent you. There's no camera to point, and photographing your own monitor with a phone rarely works well.
This reader handles that case: upload the image of the code, or use your camera if the machine has one, and see the content as text. Everything happens inside your browser, so the image is never uploaded to a server.
How it works
- 1
Drag the image in or pick the file
A screenshot, a photo, or any image containing the code will do. You can also crop to just the code if the image is large.
- 2
Or use the camera
If your machine has a camera, you can hold the printed code up to it. The browser will ask for permission the first time.
- 3
Check the content before opening it
The reader shows the full address as text and opens nothing on its own. That step is what lets you verify where the code leads.
When you need to read a QR without a phone
The most common case is a code that arrived by email or message and you're viewing it on a computer: a ticket, a receipt, an invoice with a payment code, an invitation. Photographing the screen with a phone gives you an image with glare and the monitor's pixel pattern, which readers struggle with.
The second is a code inside a document. In a PDF, a presentation or a manual, the QR is meant to be seen in print, but if the document stayed digital you have to solve it on screen. A screenshot of the code area is enough.
The third is archival: an old code nobody remembers the destination of. A label on a machine, a sign left over from a past campaign, a WiFi QR printed years ago whose password got lost. Reading it returns the content as text, and in the WiFi case that includes the network password.
Seeing where a code leads before opening it
This is the least obvious use and probably the most valuable. A QR code doesn't reveal its destination: you have to scan it to find out, and with a phone camera the step between seeing the address and opening it is a single tap, which plenty of people take without reading.
Here the result is shown as full text and nothing opens by itself. If you got a code in an email you weren't expecting, or spotted one on a parking meter that looks like an added sticker, you can read it first and decide afterwards. What to look at is the domain, the part right before the first slash: that's where you notice an address imitating a known brand without being the real one.
For the detail on the fraud patterns in circulation and the signs that give them away, that's covered in the guide on QR code scams.
What happens to the image you upload
Nothing leaves your computer. Decoding happens in the browser using your machine's processor, so the image is never sent to a server, never stored, and nobody on the other end sees it. The same goes for the camera: the video is processed locally and is neither recorded nor transmitted.
This matters more than it seems when the code contains sensitive data. A WiFi QR carries your network password in plain text. A contact one carries someone's phone number and email. Uploading those images to a service that processes them on its server means handing over that data; here there's nobody to hand it to.