QR Code
Turn any link into a QR code.
Free to use · No sign-up needed
Turn a link into something people can point a phone at
A QR code is the shortest distance between a printed thing and a web page. Put one on a poster, a slide, a handout or a table card, and anybody can reach the link without typing it or hearing you spell it out.
Paste your link, watch the code appear, and download it as an image. There is no sign-up, no watermark, and no expiry, because the code is not a redirect through us. It is your text, encoded directly.
How to use it
- Paste a link, or any text, into the box.
- The code appears as soon as you stop typing.
- Choose a size: small for a screen, medium for paper, large for a poster.
- Press Download PNG. The file is named after your text so it is findable later.
Good uses
- Slides, so a room of people can reach your link without a shortened URL nobody can read.
- Posters and flyers, where a code takes less room than an address and is harder to mistype.
- Event signage pointing at a schedule, a menu, or a form.
- Handouts in a classroom, so students reach the right page instantly.
- Anywhere you would otherwise say "it's on the website, just search for it".
Making one that actually scans
Two things break printed codes. The first is size: as a rough guide, a code needs about one centimetre of width for every metre a person will stand away from it. The second is contrast and margin. Keep it dark on light, keep the white border that comes with the download, and do not place it over a photo or a pattern.
Test it before you print a hundred of them. Open your camera, point it at the screen, and check the link that pops up is the one you meant. It takes five seconds and saves an afternoon.
Nothing you paste leaves this page
A QR code is not a reference to a record somewhere. It is your text written out in a pattern a camera can read back, and working out that pattern is arithmetic rather than a lookup. So there is nothing for a server to do: the squares are calculated by the code that already arrived with this page, drawn onto a canvas in your own browser, and the download is that canvas saved as a file.
Which is why this costs us nothing to promise. There is no upload step we could quietly keep, and no account to attach anything to. A link to an unlisted document or an unpublished draft is exactly as private after you paste it as it was before. The generator would go on working with the network unplugged, which is the clearest evidence there is that your text is not going anywhere.
When a code is the wrong answer
A printed code is fixed for good. If the address behind it might move, point the code at a stable page you control and change what that page links to, rather than reprinting a hundred flyers. A code is also wasted on a screen somebody is already reading, where a plain link is quicker to tap than a camera is to open. It earns its place the moment the page and the reader are in different worlds: paper, a wall, a slide at the back of a room, a badge on a lanyard.
Questions people ask
- Will the code stop working later?
- No. A QR code is not a link to us, it is the text itself written in squares. Nothing points at Gleekit and nothing expires, so a code you print today still works years from now as long as whatever it points at does.
- Which size should I download?
- Small for a screen, medium for a sheet of paper, large for a poster or anything read from across a room. Bigger is safer for print: a code that is too small for the distance simply will not scan.
- Why is there a white border around it?
- Scanners need a quiet margin to find the edges of the code. Cropping it tight is the most common reason a printed QR code fails, so the border is built into the download.
- Does the text I paste get sent anywhere?
- No. It is turned into squares inside your browser and never uploaded. The share link beside the code carries only the size you picked, so sending somebody that link does not send them your text either.
- Can it hold more than a link?
- Any text up to about two thousand characters, though a long one becomes dense and harder to scan. If you need a lot behind one code, point it at a page holding the content rather than cramming the content into the code.