How do I scan a QR code from a screenshot?

1. Capture the code as an image. Screenshot the part of the screen with the QR code (Cmd+Shift+4 on Mac, Win+Shift+S on Windows). If it arrived as a photo or sits in a PDF, save or screenshot that instead — any image works.
2. Drop it into the QR reader. Open the QR Code Reader below and drop the image in. Decoding happens in your browser tab; the image is never uploaded.
3. Inspect before you open. The tool labels what it found — link, Wi-Fi credentials, contact card, plain text — and shows the raw content. Check the actual URL before clicking through; that pause is your phishing defence.

Takes about ten seconds end to end. Works for codes in PDFs, slides, chat messages and photos — anywhere a camera scan is awkward or impossible.

Why "point your phone at the monitor" is the wrong answer

It half-works: glare, moiré patterns and screen refresh artifacts make monitor scans flaky, and it assumes your phone is at hand and its camera app cooperates. Decoding the image directly is deterministic — the pixels are already perfect, because they were never printed or photographed in the first place.

Screenshots decode better than photos

A screenshot is a pixel-exact copy, so it decodes essentially always. Photos fail for mundane reasons: steep angle, blur, a corner cut off. If a photo will not decode, crop it so the code fills most of the frame and make sure all three big corner squares are visible.

A QR code is data you should get to read first

QR codes routinely carry Wi-Fi passwords, payment references and tracking links. A camera scan often navigates immediately; decoding to text first means you see where a code actually points — which is also why this reader runs entirely on your device rather than routing images through a server.