QR code generator for text terminals

May 12, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

What's this?

This program generates QR codes in ANSI colors, Sixel or Unicode Block Elements format for text terminals, e.g., console, xterm (with -ti 340 option to enable Sixel), mlterm, Windows command prompt and so on.

Use case

You can transfer data to smartphones with a QR code reader application from your terminal.

Usage

qrc program takes a text from command-line argument or standard input (if no command-line argument) and encodes it to a QR code.

$ qrc --help
...
$ qrc https://fumiyas.github.io/
...
$ qrc 'WIFI:S:Our-ssid;T:WPA;P:secret;;'
...

You can get a QR code in Sixel graphics if the standard output is a terminal and it supports Sixel.

Download

Binary files are here for Linux, macOS and Windows:

Build from source codes

Install the latest released version of qrc directly with go install:

$ go install github.com/fumiyas/qrc/cmd/qrc@latest

Or, build from a local clone:

$ git clone https://github.com/fumiyas/qrc.git
$ cd qrc
$ make build       # build the qrc binary in the working tree
$ make test        # run unit tests
$ make vet         # run go vet
$ make cross       # cross-compile for Linux, macOS and Windows

TODO

  • Add the following options:
    • --ansi-color-scheme <ansi|windows>
    • --foreground-color R:G:B
    • --background-color R:G:B
    • --margin-color R:G:B
  • Timeout for tty.GetDeviceAttributes1()

Contributors

  • Hayaki Saito (@saitoha)

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