WiFi QR Code Generator
Guests scan, phone joins. No password read out across the room.
A WiFi QR code encodes the network name, the security type and the password in a format both Android and iOS recognise. Scanning it opens a "join this network" prompt — no typing, no spelling out a twenty-character password to a guest holding a phone. The code is built entirely in your browser, so the password is never sent anywhere.
Fill in the fields above and the code appears here.
How it works
Enter the network details
Exactly as they appear in your router settings — the SSID is case-sensitive.
Pick the security type
WPA covers WPA, WPA2 and WPA3. Choose "open" only for a network with no password.
Print it and put it up
SVG for a sign that has to look sharp at any size, PNG for a screen or a sticker.
What the code actually contains, and what that means for security
The payload is a short line of text: WIFI:T:WPA;S:NetworkName;P:password;;. Nothing is encrypted and nothing is hidden — a QR code is a way of writing text in a form cameras read easily, not a way of concealing it. Anyone who photographs the code can decode it and read the password in plain text.
That is the right model for a guest network on a café wall or a card by the front door, and the wrong one for the network your work laptop is on. The practical answer is the one router makers built for it: run a separate guest network with its own password, put the code on that, and leave the main network out of it. Most routers made in the last decade can do this in two clicks.
The security type matters more than it looks. Choosing WPA when the network is actually open, or the reverse, produces a code that fails silently — the phone tries to connect with the wrong handshake and reports that it cannot join. If a code will not connect, that setting is the first thing to check, before the password.
Which phones handle it, and why a code sometimes will not scan
Both platforms support it natively now. iOS has read WiFi QR codes from the Camera app since iOS 11, and Android since version 10, with most manufacturer camera apps supporting it earlier. On older devices a QR reader app can still decode the text, though the user then has to join the network by hand.
Scanning failures are usually physical rather than technical. A code needs a quiet margin of blank space around it — four modules wide, which this tool adds to both the PNG and the SVG. Printed smaller than about 2 cm square, or on a reflective surface under a ceiling light, even a correct code becomes unreliable.
Contrast is the other frequent cause. Scanners need the dark modules distinctly darker than the background, and inverting the colours — a light code on a dark background — breaks many readers outright, because the specification assumes dark-on-light. If you change the colours here, keep the code dark and the background pale, and test with an actual phone before printing a hundred of them.