Stop spelling out your WiFi password
Picture the usual scene. A friend walks in, asks for the WiFi, and you start reading out Bl@ckCoffee_2026! one character at a time while they squint at their phone. Capital B. At sign. Lowercase l. It’s tedious and people always mistype it.
A WiFi QR code fixes that. Type your network name, password, and security type here, hit generate, and you get a square barcode. Point a phone camera at it, tap the prompt, and the phone joins. No reading, no typos, no “is that a one or an L?”
Stick it on the fridge. Tape it by the front door. Drop it on a table tent at your cafe. Anyone who can hold up a camera is connected in about two seconds.
What the code actually contains
The QR encodes a short text string in a format both Apple and Google agreed on years ago. It looks like this:
WIFI:T:WPA;S:MyNetwork;P:supersecret;H:false;;Reading left to right: T is the security type (WPA covers WPA2 and WPA3, WEP for ancient routers, or nopass for open networks). S is the SSID. P is the password. H flags whether the network is hidden. The double semicolon closes it out.
One detail this tool handles for you: certain characters have to be escaped. If your SSID or password contains a backslash, semicolon, comma, colon, or double quote, the spec says to put a backslash in front of it. A password like pa;ss becomes pa\;ss in the payload. Miss that step and the phone parses the string wrong and the join silently fails. The generator escapes them automatically, so paste your real password and don’t worry about it.
Scanning it on a phone
Here’s the part people don’t expect. You usually don’t need an app.
On an iPhone running iOS 11 or newer, open the regular Camera app, aim it at the code, and a yellow “Join Network” banner slides down. Tap it. Done. Android has had the same trick baked into the camera and the WiFi settings screen since Android 10, and Samsung, Pixel, and most other phones support it out of the box.
Older phones, or ones where the native scan is flaky, can use any QR reader from the app store. The QR Code Reader here decodes it from a saved image if you want to double-check what you encoded before printing.
A few things worth knowing
That QR code holds your password in plain text. There’s no encryption inside the image itself. Anyone who scans it, or who snaps a photo of the printout and scans that later, can read the actual password. For a guest network or your home WiFi, that’s usually fine, that’s the whole point. For a sensitive network, think twice about taping it somewhere public.
Print it at a decent size. Roughly 2 cm (about 0.8 inches) square is the floor. Smaller than that and cameras struggle to focus, especially in dim light.
Test before you print fifty copies. Generate the code, scan it with your own phone, confirm it actually connects. Then run the batch.
Many routers offer a separate guest network with its own SSID and password. Generating the QR from those credentials keeps visitors off your main network and away from your printers, NAS, and smart-home gear.
Common questions
Does the person scanning need a special app?
Nope. Modern iPhone and Android cameras read WiFi QR codes natively. They just need a QR reader app if their phone is old or has the feature turned off.
Will it work with my hidden network?
Yep. Tick the “hidden network” box before generating. That sets the H:true flag so the phone knows to look for a non-broadcast SSID instead of giving up when it can’t see one.
What do I pick for encryption?
Almost certainly WPA, which covers WPA2 and WPA3. Choose WEP only for very old hardware, and pick None for a genuinely open network with no password.
Is my password sent anywhere?
No. Everything happens in your browser. The SSID and password get turned into a QR image on your own device and never touch a server.
Can I change the password later and reuse the same code?
The code is locked to whatever credentials you entered. Rotate the password and the old printout stops working, so generate a fresh QR and swap the printout.