17.12.2018

The Advent of Void: Day 17: qrencode

qrencode is a command line QR-Code generator.

You can generate a QRCode from an arbitrary string:

$ qrencode -o qrcode.png "QRCode Message"

This will create a new png image containing the QR-Code. You can use feh to display it:

$ feh qrcode.png

If you’re a terminal guy, you might dislike the window popping up. qrencode has you covered there:

$ qrencode -t ansi "QRCode Message"

This will generate a scannable QR-Code directly on the terminal window using ANSI escape sequences. If you’d like to avoid escape codes qrencode also supports pure UTF-8 encoding using -t utf8 .

$ qrencode -t utf8 "QRCode Message" █████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████ ████ ▄▄▄▄▄ █▀▄█▀▄█ ▄▄▄▄▄ ████ ████ █ █ █▀▄█▀██ █ █ ████ ████ █▄▄▄█ █▀▀ █ █ █▄▄▄█ ████ ████▄▄▄▄▄▄▄█▄█ ▀ █▄▄▄▄▄▄▄████ ████▄▄ ▄▄▀▄ ▄ ▀▄▄ ▀ █▄▀ █████ ████▀██▀▄ ▄▀ ██ ▄ █▀█▀▀ █████ █████▄█▄██▄█ ██▄▄▀▄ ▀█ ▀█████ ████ ▄▄▄▄▄ █▄▀█ █▄█ ▀▄▀████ ████ █ █ █ █▄█▄▄▄▀▀▀█▄▄████ ████ █▄▄▄█ █ ▀ ▄ ▄▀█ ▀██████ ████▄▄▄▄▄▄▄█▄▄▄█▄▄▄████▄█████ █████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████

qrencode supports a rich set of output formats including PNG, SVG, EPS, XPM, and even pure ASCII.

More colors? No problem! You can define custom foreground- and background colors:

$ qrencode -o - "QRCode Message" --foreground=00ff00 --background=0000ff | feh -

For more information please read the qrcode(1) manpage.