QR code scanner online
Scan a QR code with your phone camera or laptop webcam, or from a photo or screenshot. It shows where a link goes before you open it, and what a WiFi, contact or event code holds.
- Free
- No sign-up
- Your image never leaves your device
- Nothing opens by itself
Choose an image to see what its code holds. Nothing opens until you say so.
How to use it
- 1Drop, paste or choose an image (a screenshot, a photo of a poster, a picture someone sent you), or switch to Camera and point your webcam or phone camera at the code.
- 2The scanner reads every code it sees and shows what each one holds, with the full link spelled out.
- 3Choose what to do next: open the link, copy the WiFi password, save the contact or add the event.
Read a QR code from an image or camera
A QR code is text arranged as squares, and a QR code decoder turns the squares back into that text. Often it is a web link, but it can also be a WiFi network with its password, a contact card, a calendar event, an email or text message ready to send, a phone number or a map location. The scanner recognizes each of these and offers the matching next step.
Phone cameras often open a link the moment they see a code, which is what fake codes rely on: a sticker over a parking meter or a poster can send you to a page that looks like your bank or a payment form. Here nothing opens by itself. You see the site name in large type and the full link underneath, with a warning when it is a short link that hides its destination, uses look-alike international letters, puts a misleading name before an “@”, or isn’t encrypted. Codes that try to run script or open apps (javascript:, data:, intent:) are shown as plain text and never opened.
Scan a QR code from a screenshot or photo
A phone can’t point its camera at its own screen, so take a screenshot of the code instead. On an iPhone or Android phone, open this page, tap the image box and pick the screenshot from Photos or your gallery. The full link appears before anything opens.
Scan a QR code on a laptop, PC or Mac
The scanner runs in your browser, so there’s nothing to install on the computer. If the code is on paper or on a phone, switch to Camera and hold it up to your webcam. Your browser asks for permission to use the camera first.
If the code is on your screen, in an email, a PDF or a video call, take a screenshot of it. On Windows, press Windows logo key + Shift + S, drag around the code and copy the snip. On a Mac, press Control-Shift-Command-4 and drag, which copies the selection. Then paste it on this page with Ctrl + V or Command-V, or save the screenshot and drop the file on the image box.