How to Make a Wi-Fi QR Code

Published September 14, 2026

Every guest asks the same question, and every answer involves spelling out a 20-character password that was designed to be unspellable. A Wi-Fi QR code ends that: your guest points their camera at a small printed square, taps once, and they are on the network. No typing, no reading letters out, no sticky note with your password in handwriting.

What almost nobody explains is that there is nothing special about a “Wi-Fi QR code” at all. It is an ordinary QR code containing one line of text in a particular format. Get the format right and any phone made in the last several years will join automatically. Get one semicolon wrong and the phone shows a meaningless string instead. This guide gives you the exact format, the escaping rules that trip people up, and the practical details for a home or a business.

The exact format

This is the whole thing. Copy it, replace the two bold parts, and keep every semicolon and colon where it is:

WIFI:T:WPA;S:YourNetworkName;P:YourPassword;;

A real example for a network called Cafe Nord with the password flatwhite2026:

WIFI:T:WPA;S:Cafe Nord;P:flatwhite2026;;

Three things people get wrong on the first try:

• The double semicolon at the end is required. One closes the last field, one closes the record. Leaving off either breaks the scan.
• The network name must match exactly — the same capitals, the same spaces, the same stray hyphen. Copy it from your phone's Wi-Fi list rather than typing it from memory. Names are case sensitive, and so are passwords.
• No spaces around the colons or semicolons. S: Cafe Nord puts a leading space inside the name and the join will fail.

What the T field means

Field order is flexible — WIFI:S:Name;T:WPA;P:Pass;; works just as well — but keeping T first matches what most phones expect and costs nothing.

Passwords with awkward characters

Because semicolons and colons are structural in this format, a password containing one has to be escaped with a backslash so the phone treats it as a character rather than a separator. Five characters need it:

So the password my:pass;word is written P:my\:pass\;word. Everything else — ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) - _ + = and the like — goes in untouched. If your password is all letters and digits, which most router-generated ones are, you can ignore this section entirely.

One more edge case: if your password happens to be entirely hexadecimal digits and exactly the right length, some phones guess it is a raw hex key rather than a phrase. Wrapping it in double quotes inside the field — P:"a1b2c3d4e5" — forces it to be read as text.

Hidden networks

If your router does not broadcast its name, add H:true so the phone knows to look for it rather than waiting for it to appear:

WIFI:T:WPA;S:Cafe Nord;P:flatwhite2026;H:true;;

Leave it out for a normal network. Adding H:false is harmless but pointless.

Making and printing the code

1. Build your one-line string using the format above. Write it in a plain text box, not a word processor — autocorrect loves to turn straight quotes into curly ones, which breaks the code silently.
2. Open the QR Code Generator and paste the whole line, starting at WIFI: and ending with the two semicolons.
3. Set Error correction to Q or H. A code that lives on a wall gets fingerprints, splashes and sun, and the higher redundancy keeps it readable through all of that.
4. Choose Large for anything printed. A denser pattern needs more physical space, and a Wi-Fi string with a long password is denser than a short link.
5. Download the PNG and test it with a phone that is not already on the network. This is the step everyone skips. Turn Wi-Fi off on your phone first, or ask someone else to try it — a phone that already knows the network will appear to succeed no matter what the code says.
6. Print it at least 3 cm (about 1.2 inch) square with a clear white margin all the way around, and laminate it or slip it in a frame if it is going somewhere public.

A nice touch for a cafe, holiday rental or waiting room: print the code with the network name underneath in plain text. Some visitors will still prefer to type, and a phone with a cracked camera or an old OS needs the fallback.

Does it work on every phone?

On modern phones, yes, and with no app involved:

• iPhone (iOS 11 and later) — open the Camera app, point it at the code, and tap the banner offering to join the network. The code can also be read from the Control Centre code scanner.
• Android 10 and later — the stock camera or Google Lens recognises the format and offers to connect. Android also has the reverse feature: in Wi-Fi settings, tap your connected network and choose Share to see a generated code for it.
• Older Android — may need a scanner app, and some builds display the password as text rather than joining. That still saves the guest from typing a random string.
• Laptops — do not generally scan codes, so keep the password written somewhere for the person who arrives with only a laptop.

The security question, honestly

A QR code is not encryption. The password sits inside the pattern as plain readable text, and anyone with a phone and a line of sight can pull it out — including from a photograph taken across a room. That changes where you should and should not put one.

• Fine: a card in a guest bedroom, a code inside a rental flat, a small sign on a cafe table.
• Not fine: a code in a window facing the street, or on a poster visible from outside the building.
• Never: posting the image of your home Wi-Fi code on social media. People do this constantly with holiday-let listing photos.

If you run a business, the right answer is a separate guest network. Nearly every router made in the last decade can broadcast one with its own name and password and no access to the devices on your main network. Make the QR code for the guest network only, and you can hand it out freely and change the password whenever you like without touching anything else. Since the code is free to regenerate, rotating the guest password every few months costs you one reprint.

Is it private and free?

It should be, and with Toolyard it is. Many QR sites send whatever you type to their server to render the image — which means posting your Wi-Fi password to a company you know nothing about. The Toolyard QR Code Generator draws the code entirely inside your browser, so the string never leaves your device. It is free with no account and no watermark, the codes are static so they never expire, and you can use them commercially. Once the page has loaded, it even works with your connection off.