How do you scan a QR code from a screenshot or a photo on your phone?

You can't point your phone's camera at its own screen, but you don't need to. On iPhone, open the screenshot or photo in Photos and touch and hold the code. On Android, open it in Google Photos and tap Lens. The link appears and you tap it. Below are the steps for each phone and for a computer, and what we learned when we tried to break 44 screenshots on purpose.

On iPhone

With Photos

1. Take a screenshot of the code, or open a photo that has one.
2. Open it in Photos.
3. Touch and hold the code, or tap the Live Text button in the bottom corner if it appears.
4. Tap the link that shows up.

With the Google app

If Photos doesn't find the code, open the Google app, tap the Lens icon in the search bar, then the photo icon, and pick the screenshot. The link appears on the screen.

On a web page

In Safari, touching and holding a code on a web page often offers to open its link straight away, with no screenshot at all.

On Android

With Circle to Search (no screenshot needed)

On recent Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones, and on more Android phones every year:

1. Press and hold the home button, or the navigation bar at the bottom if you use gestures.
2. Circle the code with your finger.
3. Tap the link that appears.

With Google Photos and Lens

1. Take a screenshot of the code, or open a photo that has one.
2. Open it in Google Photos and tap Lens.
3. Tap the link that appears.

Samsung's Gallery app can read codes too, and the same steps work for a picture someone sent you in a chat: save it, open it, tap Lens. Every other way to scan on Android is in our guide on how to scan a QR code on Android.

On a computer

• In Chrome: right click the page or the image and choose Search with Google Lens, then drag a box around the code. The link appears in the side panel.
• With your phone: point your phone's camera at the computer screen. It's the quickest way for any code you can see, as long as the screen isn't too bright (lower the brightness if the camera struggles).

What breaks a QR code in a picture: our test

To find out what actually stops a screenshot from scanning, we made two codes with the same encoder our free QR code generator uses. One holds a short link (29 by 29 squares). The other holds a long tracking link with five UTM tags (53 by 53 squares). We placed each one on a phone sized screenshot and degraded it the way real screenshots get degraded: smaller, compressed, cropped, shrunk by a chat app and flipped to dark mode. Then we read all 44 pictures with the QR reader built into Chrome.

What it means for you:

• Size in pixels is what matters. The short link survived down to 50 pixels wide; the long one needed about 100. Below about one and a half pixels for each small square, codes stopped reading. (One long link copy read at 60 pixels by luck; at that size, it's a coin toss.)
• Compression isn't the problem. Even a JPEG at the lowest quality read every time the original did.
• Shrinking is. Chat apps and email often send a smaller copy of a picture. A code that read on the sender's phone can fail on yours.
• Margins and dark mode were fine here. Our reader handled a tight crop and inverted colors. Some scanner apps are stricter, so a code on a white background with a margin is still the safe choice when you make one.

So when a code won't scan from a picture, zoom in on the code before you take the screenshot, crop so the code fills more of the image, or ask the sender for the original.

If it still won't scan

• Zoom in and screenshot again. On a ticket, a PDF or a web page, pinch to zoom until the code fills most of the width, then take the screenshot.
• Get the original. A forwarded or re-forwarded picture loses pixels each time.
• Try another reader. If Photos finds nothing, try Lens, and the other way round.
• Check the code itself. Low contrast, light dots on a light background or a damaged print fail in a picture too. Our guide on why a QR code is not scanning covers each cause.

Scan safely

A code in a screenshot is just a link, so treat it like one. Read the address your phone shows before you open it. Be wary of codes in unexpected messages about fines, deliveries or locked accounts, and don't type passwords or card numbers on a page you reached that way. Our post on whether QR codes are safe shows how to spot a fake one.

Making codes that people scan from screens

If you put a code in an email, a PDF or on a website, many people will see it on the same phone they'd scan it with. Two things help:

• Add a link or a button next to the code, so people on a phone can just tap. The code is for everyone else.
• Keep the link short. A short link makes a code with fewer, bigger squares, which in our test read at half the size of a long one. A KuikCode always stores a short link, even when the page behind it has a long address full of tracking tags, and you can change that page after the code is out. See how to make a QR code for a link.