Toolora

How to create a Wi-Fi QR code

Let guests join your network by scanning instead of typing a 20-character password.

Reading a Wi-Fi password out loud is a small, repeated annoyance — for cafés, guesthouses, offices and anyone with visitors. A Wi-Fi QR code removes it: the guest points a camera at a card and their phone offers to join.

This guide covers how it works, the details that quietly break it, and how to check yours before you print fifty copies.

What a Wi-Fi QR code actually contains

It is not a link. It is a short, structured line of text that phones recognise as network credentials:

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

Four fields:

  • T — security type: WPA (covers WPA2 and WPA3), WEP, or nopass for open networks
  • S — the network name, exactly as it is broadcast
  • P — the password, omitted for open networks
  • H — true only if the network is hidden

The double semicolon at the end terminates the record.

This means the password is in the code, in plain text. Anyone who scans it — or photographs the card and decodes it later — has your password. That is fine for a guest network. It is not fine for the network your accounting machine is on. Which brings us to the one decision that matters.

Put guests on a guest network

Most routers made in the last decade can broadcast a second, isolated network. Use it. A guest network gives visitors internet access without access to the printer, the NAS, the security cameras, or any other device on your main network — and a leaked guest password costs you nothing but a password change.

If your router does not support one, treat the printed code as a semi-public credential and change it on a schedule.

Making the code

  1. Open the QR code generator and choose Wi-Fi network.
  2. Enter the network name exactly as it appears in your phone’s Wi-Fi list. This is case-sensitive and space-sensitive — Cafe WiFi and cafe wifi are different networks.
  3. Enter the password, or choose No password for an open network.
  4. Leave security on WPA unless you know otherwise. WPA covers WPA2 and WPA3; WEP is only for equipment old enough that you would know.
  5. Tick Hidden network only if your network does not broadcast its name. If you can see it in a normal Wi-Fi list, it is not hidden — ticking this on a visible network stops the code working.
  6. Download as PNG for a card or sign, or SVG if a printer asked for vector artwork.

Everything runs in your browser, so the password is never sent anywhere.

The details that break it

Special characters in the name or password. Semicolons, commas, colons, quotes and backslashes are structural in the WIFI format — a password of p;word splits the record and produces a code that either fails or joins the wrong network. A correct generator escapes these for you (ours does), but if you built the string by hand, this is almost always the bug.

Trailing spaces. Copy-pasting a password from a document often brings an invisible space with it. The code will scan and the join will fail with no useful error.

Wrong security type. Selecting nopass for a secured network produces a code that scans and then fails to connect.

Hidden ticked by mistake. The most common cause of “it scans but nothing happens”.

Test it before you print

This takes thirty seconds and saves reprinting.

  1. On a phone that is not already on the network, forget the network first — otherwise you are testing nothing, because it will join from saved credentials regardless of whether the code works.
  2. Open the camera and point it at the code on screen.
  3. Confirm you actually reach the internet, not just “connected”.

Test on both an iPhone and an Android device if you have them. iOS 11 and later scan Wi-Fi codes from the built-in camera; most Android phones do too, though some older ones need Google Lens or the camera’s QR mode.

Printing it

Keep it at least 2 cm (about ¾ inch) across for something people hold or approach closely — a table tent, a card, a sticker by the door. For anything scanned from further away, size scales with distance: see QR code size for print for the rule of thumb.

Add the network name in readable text next to the code. Some guests will want to type it, some phones will not cooperate, and a code with no fallback is a dead end.

Leave the white margin around the code alone. That quiet zone is part of the symbol, and cropping to it is a common reason a code that worked on screen fails on paper.

If it does not work

Work through why is my QR code not scanning — most Wi-Fi failures are one of the four causes above, and all four are fixable in under a minute.