Around 4300 characters at the limit, but long text makes a dense pattern that cheap scanners struggle with. Under a few hundred characters stays comfortable.

Will emoji and other alphabets work?

Yes. The text is encoded as UTF-8, so Japanese, Arabic, Cyrillic and emoji all survive. Very old scanner apps may show them as boxes.

Is my text sent anywhere?

No. The pattern is drawn by your own browser. Disconnect from the internet and the tool keeps working, which is the easiest way to check.

Text QR Code Generator

Any text, encoded exactly as you typed it.

Your text

Download as

pngsvg

Any text, encoded exactly as you typed it.

How to use it

Type or paste your text. Anything goes. Line breaks, punctuation and non-Latin characters are all preserved exactly.
Watch the pattern change. The code updates as you type. More text makes a denser pattern that needs printing larger.
Download it. PNG for screens, SVG for print. The encoded text is shown underneath so you can check it first.

When you would use this

A plain text QR code shows a message rather than opening anything. Scanning one displays the text on screen and leaves the person to decide what to do with it, which makes it useful for serial numbers, machine settings, shelf labels, wifi instructions written out longhand, or a note taped to equipment. Because nothing is fetched, it works with no signal at all, which is why they turn up in warehouses and on plant machinery. The text is stored as UTF-8, so accented letters, non-Latin scripts and emoji survive intact. Keep it short where you can: every extra character adds density, and a dense code printed small is the usual reason a scanner gives up.

Questions

How much text fits?: Around 4300 characters at the limit, but long text makes a dense pattern that cheap scanners struggle with. Under a few hundred characters stays comfortable.
Will emoji and other alphabets work?: Yes. The text is encoded as UTF-8, so Japanese, Arabic, Cyrillic and emoji all survive. Very old scanner apps may show them as boxes.
Is my text sent anywhere?: No. The pattern is drawn by your own browser. Disconnect from the internet and the tool keeps working, which is the easiest way to check.