this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
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A standalone utility for decoding QR codes that will work on a desktop. All I want is to be able to put a picture of the code in and get whatever text it was concealing in a little text box where I can read it, and C&P it if it's useful to do so. If something like this exists, I've never been able to find it, although there are seemingly dozens of programs for generating QR codes.
Kde's spectacle (screenshot utility) does this by default now.
Not op, but holy shit, it actually does! Wish I knew that before, ty!
Ya know I tried for years to make QR codes a thing. Now they're a thing but everyone uses them wrong and it drives me absolutely nuts.
What qualifies as "using them wrong"?
Anytime they're not printed. If it's not printed, use a link. It makes no sense. I cannot scan a QR code on my phone with my phone.
Fair enough. Sometimes it seems QR users assume everybody has two devices.
I wrote a little script a while back that would save a temp file with fswebcam, run zbarimg on it to decode the qr, delete the temp file and if it worked it would pipe the output into xclip/wl-copy, otherwise it would try again (up to 8 times).
I hooked it up to a keyboard shortcut and I'll see the webcam light flash one or two times when I hit it, then know it's good.
It wouldn't be a ton of work to also have a popup with the qr value using zenity or something, maybe use the --question and pass it "copy $output to clipboard?". You could have an --error if all the scan attempts failed.
Feel free to shoot me a pm if you want help.
Should be very possible. Are you on Linux or Windows? Please write me again at the end of the week if I didn't come back to you.
zbarimg decodes them on CLI.