Retail labels
Jewellery and handmade goods have no room for care details. A code on the swing tag keeps it uncluttered.
Sterling silver. Avoid perfume and water. Store in the pouch provided.
Write what you want the reader to see, word for word. Line breaks survive, so a three-line care label stays three lines on their screen. What you type is what gets encoded.
Solid colour, a two or three stop gradient, and a logo in the centre are all optional. Black on white is the most forgiving combination, so change it only when the artwork genuinely needs it.
Eight variants appear as thumbnails: squares, rounded squares, circles, dots, stars, crosses, triangles and hexagons. Squares and rounded squares scan most reliably; the decorative ones cost you a little margin.
Choose PNG or JPEG and a pixel dimension from 200 up to 2000. PNG keeps the module edges hard for print; JPEG is the smaller file when you are emailing it or dropping it into a document.
A text QR code is the simplest job a QR code can do. Instead of sending a phone to a website, it hands over a few words: a care instruction, a shelf location, a clue for a treasure hunt, a reminder stuck to a machine. Point a camera at it and the message appears on screen, ready to read or copy.
Most codes on posters and menus hold a web address, so the reader waits for a page to load before learning anything. A text code skips that trip. The words are part of the pattern, so there is nothing to host, nothing that can expire and nothing that tracks the person scanning. The trade-off is space and flexibility: text codes suit short, fixed information, and once printed the wording cannot change.
A QR code whose content is plain, unformatted text. The QR standard (ISO/IEC 18004) simply stores a sequence of characters. When those characters form a web address, phones treat the result as a link. When they form an ordinary sentence, phones show it to the reader as text.
Bay C-14 / Pallet 227 / QC passed 04-09A code built from that string contains those 39 characters and nothing more: no hidden identifier, no shortened link and no formatting. Bold type, fonts and images cannot be stored. The code is also static. Changing one character produces a completely different pattern, so nobody can alter or redirect it after printing, and it does not depend on any company staying in business.
On paper, a QR code holds up to 2,953 bytes at the lowest error correction level and 1,273 bytes at the highest. Those ceilings need a 177 × 177 grid that few phones can read from a small label. What matters is the length that still scans quickly in real conditions.
| Text length (English characters) | Grid at level H | Scanning quality | Minimum print width* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 24 | 21–29 modules | Excellent reads instantly, even at an angle | 2 cm |
| 25–58 | 33–41 modules | Very good in normal light | 2.5 cm |
| 59–98 | 45–53 modules | Good with a sharp print | 3 cm |
| 99–150 | 57–65 modules | Reliable with a clear quiet zone | 4 cm |
| Over 150 | 69+ modules | Slower small prints fail on budget phones | 5 cm or more |
*Assumes dark modules on white, sharp printing and scanning from 15–25 cm. Emoji and non-Latin scripts fill each row with fewer characters.
Extra text adds rows and columns of modules, so at the same print size each module gets smaller. A 29 × 29 grid printed 3 cm wide has modules about 1 mm across; a 65 × 65 grid shrinks them to under half a millimetre. Ink spread, creases and glare blur squares that small. That is why this page caps input at 150 characters. If your message does not fit, trim it to the essential instruction, split it across two codes, or use a website QR code.
Yes. Decoding a QR code is pure image processing done by the phone, so it needs no network. A URL code is also decoded offline, but the result is only an address and the page still has to load. With a text code, the decoded result is the message itself. You can check this by switching a phone to aeroplane mode and scanning any plain-text code.
One caveat: if your message includes a web address, the phone can show it offline but cannot open it without a connection.
Jewellery and handmade goods have no room for care details. A code on the swing tag keeps it uncluttered.
Sterling silver. Avoid perfume and water. Store in the pouch provided.
Station questions read instantly on filtered school tablets, with no website for pupils to wander off to.
Station 3: count the growth rings on the cut log by the gate.
The one instruction owners need stays on the product for its whole life, not on page 14 of a lost manual.
Charge 4 hours before first use. Hold power 5 seconds to reset.
Staff scan and paste exact bay and batch strings, removing typos, even in cold stores with no signal.
Bay C-14 / Batch 5521 / Inspected 12-08
Directions appear instantly when thousands of arriving visitors have slowed mobile data to a crawl.
Hall B: follow the blue line past the food court, second door on the left.
The correct start-up sequence sits at the point of use, on shop floors where the manual is out of reach.
Prime pump 3x. Open valve B before A. Max 4 bar.
Once printed, the two look identical, but they behave very differently. The choice comes down to one question: does the reader need anything beyond the words?
| Text QR code | URL QR code | |
|---|---|---|
| Internet | Not needed | Required to load the page |
| Editing | None after printing | Update the page at any time |
| Content length | A sentence or two | Practically unlimited |
| Scan tracking | Not possible | Possible with analytics |
| Best for | Labels, instructions, directions, clues | Menus, forms, videos, bookings |
A rule of thumb: if the wording will still be correct in two years and the reader acts on it right where they stand, use text. If it might change, runs longer than a couple of sentences or needs to be measured, use a website QR code. For contact details and network access, the phone number, email and Wi-Fi generators create codes that phones can act on directly.
No. Type your message, choose colours or a design if you want them, and download the image. There is no account or subscription, and the file is yours to print as often as you like.
No. A text code does not rely on any service, so it keeps working for as long as the printed pattern stays clear and undamaged.
You can type a web address into the message, and many scanning apps will offer to open it, but that needs a connection. If the link is the main point, a website QR code gives readers a cleaner experience.
Roughly ten times its width: a 3 cm code scans from about 30 cm, and a 20 cm code from about 2 metres. Longer messages and poor lighting reduce that distance.
Often, yes. This page uses the highest error correction level, which can recover the message with roughly 30 percent of the pattern damaged, as long as the three corner squares remain intact.
Yes. Google Lens and many scanning apps offer a translate option, and the text can always be copied into a translation app. Short sentences keep automatic translation accurate.
Yes, if the modules stay clearly darker than the background. Deep blues, greens, reds and dark gradients work on white. Light-on-light colours and inverted designs cause problems.
A text code only displays the password for someone to type in. A Wi-Fi QR code uses a format phones recognise, letting guests join with one tap.