When plain text is the right choice
Most QR codes are instructions to a phone: open this, join that, call them. A text code carries words, and scanning simply shows them. Nothing opens, nothing is looked up, and no connection is needed at any point.
That makes it right for things belonging to an object rather than to the internet: a machine’s serial number and service date, a shelf label, a batch number on a production line, a locker tag, care instructions on a garment, or a note for whoever finds a piece of equipment.
What happens when someone scans it
The phone shows the text and usually offers to copy or share it. If the text contains something recognisable — a link, an email address — most cameras offer to act on it, but that is the phone being helpful rather than anything in the code. Because a text code has no destination, it cannot break, redirect or be tracked by anyone.
Length, unicode and line breaks
The ceiling is 2,953 bytes at level L and 1,273 at level H, and the counter under the field tells you where you stand. Bytes are not characters: an accented letter costs two, most CJK characters three, an emoji four. Line breaks are preserved. Long text makes a dense code, and dense codes need printing larger — if it looks like grey noise, shorten it or size it up.
What goes inside the code
There is no format here at all. The code contains exactly what you typed:
Compressor 4B — serviced 2026-03-14 — next service 2026-09-14- no scheme, no prefix, no encoding wrapper
- accents, symbols and emoji are stored as UTF-8 and round-trip unchanged
Before you print it
- Shorter text makes a sparser code that scans faster and from further away.
- For equipment that takes knocks, level Q or H keeps the code readable when part of the label is damaged.
- Print the critical part of the text next to the code as well. Labels outlive cameras.
- If the text is really a link, use the link type instead so phones offer to open it.