Plain text QR — Input checklist

Worked example

Type one line of text you are happy for anyone to read; the tool encodes it as typed, so check spelling, accents and byte length.

Picture a hotel putting a card in each room: "Checkout 11:00. Breakfast 07:00 to 10:00, lobby." Everything you enter is copied into the code as written, including leading and trailing spaces, but an empty or spaces-only field is refused with "Enter content to create this QR code." The field is a single line, so line breaks pasted from a document are dropped; separate items with a full stop, slash or comma instead.

Count bytes, not characters. Plain ASCII uses one byte per character, accented letters such as é take two, Korean, Japanese and Chinese characters three, and emoji four. A 20-character English note is about 20 bytes and fits a 29 x 29 grid at the default high level, while 20 Korean characters are about 60 bytes and need 45 x 45.

A common mistake is using this type for something sensitive, such as a door code or a password. The text is plainly readable by every scanner, it is encoded rather than encrypted. If you need a Wi-Fi password, use the Wi-Fi option instead; for private data, do not use a QR at all. Also avoid typing a web address here when you want a link, since the URL type validates it.

Concrete check: use copy content and compare the pasted text with your source, letter by letter, including punctuation, accents and the spacing between sentences. Any difference you see is a difference every scanner will see.

Short text, accents and line breaks

Decoded text content

A text code carries only what you typed, in plain view of anyone who scans it.