Scan a WiFi QR Code with Your Camera or an Image

The situation this tool solves

You scanned a WiFi QR code, from a router sticker, a cafe table tent, a hotel welcome card, and instead of connecting, your phone showed a wall of text. Or it connected your phone, but now you need the actual password to get your laptop online. Either way, the credentials are locked inside the code, and this decoder gets them out.

Two ways to decode

Upload the image. A photo of the sticker, a screenshot someone sent you, a saved QR image: drop it in and the decoder reads the code and displays the network name, security type, and password separately.

Paste the raw text. If a scanner app already showed you something like WIFI:T:WPA;S:HomeNetwork;P:s3cret!;;, paste it into our text-paste decoder and it splits the fields cleanly, handling escaped characters that trip up manual reading.

How camera scanning works

Why your camera shows text instead of connecting

This is the single most common complaint about WiFi QR codes, and it is not a fault in the code. Android has supported automatic WiFi joining from a QR code since version 10. iOS supports it through the Camera app on iOS 11 and later. Outside those paths (a third-party scanner app, a desktop webcam, a browser-based reader) the software has no permission to change your network settings, so it does the only thing it can and shows you the text.

What you see looks like this:

WIFI:T:WPA;S:MyNetwork;P:hunter2;H:false;;

That is the correct, complete content of the code. Nothing is broken. You simply need the fields pulled apart, which is what the scanner above does automatically.

Already connected? Get the password without a code

If the network is already saved on your phone, you may not need a QR code at all:

• iPhone, iOS 16 or later: open Settings, tap Wi-Fi, tap the (i) next to the network, then tap Password and confirm with Face ID or Touch ID. On iOS 18 the Passwords app can also show the network as a QR code for someone else to scan.
• Android 10 or later: open the network in your Wi-Fi settings and tap Share. Many phones print the password under the QR code. If yours only shows the code, take a screenshot and drop it into the decoder above.

Our guide to finding a WiFi password from a QR code walks through each phone step by step.

Where the password lives inside the code

A WiFi QR code is not encrypted. It is a plain text string in a standard format that Android and iOS both read. The S: field is the network name, P: is the password, T: is the security type. Our WiFi QR format guide documents every field, including the odd cases: hidden networks, WEP legacy codes, and passwords containing semicolons.

Common situations

Hotel gave you a QR but the smart TV needs a typed password. The office guest network is QR-only and your Linux laptop has no scanner. Grandma's router sticker faded except the QR square. A friend AirDropped you a screenshot of their network code. In each case: decode once, read the password, type it where you need it. If your only copy of the code is on the same phone screen you are scanning with, use the screenshot WiFi scanner instead: it reads codes from images already on your device.

A note on ethics and safety

Decoding a code that was shared with you is exactly what the code is for: the owner published their credentials the moment they printed it. This tool does not crack, guess, or intercept anything; it reads what is openly written. Everything runs in your browser, so the password never touches our servers. Scanning a code from an untrusted source? Check where it points first with the safe QR scanner: WiFi-format codes are harmless, but URL codes disguised as WiFi codes are a known phishing trick. And when you want to make a code for your own network, the WiFi QR generator does it in seconds.

What fits in a WiFi QR code

WiFi QR codes use the WIFI: format that the ZXing project defined and that Android 10+ and iOS 11+ read natively. The full string follows the pattern WIFI:T:WPA;S:networkname;P:password;H:false;;. The T field is the security type: usually WPA, which also covers WPA2, or WEP for old networks, or nopass for open ones. WEP was declared insecure long ago, but codes carrying WEP credentials still turn up on older hotel and shop installs. Size is never the problem: a network name can be up to 32 bytes and a WPA2 password 8 to 63 characters, which fits comfortably inside a small QR code.

What this decoder does not verify

The decoder extracts the credential string. It does not test whether those credentials authenticate against a live router, confirm the network is in range, or verify the BSSID. It performs no network request. If a QR code encodes a hidden network (H:true), most OS-level scanners fail silently; this tool still returns the SSID and password regardless of the hidden flag. It also can't tell you whether a password has shown up in a data breach; a breach-check service does that job.

Troubleshooting failed decodes

When a decode fails, the cause is usually the image, not the code. Blurry or heavily compressed pictures soften the edges of the three corner squares. A crop that is too tight cuts into the quiet zone, the clear border that must be at least 4 module widths wide under ISO/IEC 18004. Glare and low contrast do the rest. Retake the photo straight on, in even light, with some white space around the code. If the picture itself is soft, why QR codes come out blurred explains which faults can be recovered and which need a fresh code, and the QR code not scanning checklist works through the rest in order.

If the decoder shows the network name but the password looks cut short, the password probably contains a semicolon, comma or colon that was not escaped. The WIFI format requires those characters to be written with a backslash in front, so a semicolon inside a password must appear as \;. Re-encode using a generator that follows the format, such as the WiFi QR code generator, then scan the corrected code.