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The Wi-Fi QR Code Format

Scanning a Wi-Fi QR code works because the code encodes a small structured string rather than a plain link: WIFI:T:WPA;S:MyNetwork;P:MyPassword;H:false;;. Each field has a single-letter key — T for the security type (WPA, WEP, or nopass for an open network), S for the network name (SSID), P for the password, and H for whether the network is hidden — separated by semicolons and closed with a double semicolon. A phone's camera app parses that string, recognizes the WIFI: prefix, and offers to join the network directly instead of opening it as a link or plain text.

This format has no official IEEE or Wi-Fi Alliance specification behind it. It was popularized by ZXing (Zebra Crossing), the open-source barcode-scanning library that many early Android QR readers were built on, and it became the de facto industry standard simply because everyone else copied the same syntax. Apple gave it official first-class support starting with iOS 11 in 2017, when the built-in Camera app gained the ability to recognize a Wi-Fi QR code and offer a one-tap "Join Network" prompt; Android's built-in camera and Google Lens support the same format natively as well. Because the format was never locked behind a formal spec, small implementation differences exist between scanners — some fall back gracefully and treat the network as visible if the H: field is omitted entirely — but the T:, S: and P: fields are read identically by essentially every reader in use today, which is what makes the format reliable in practice despite having no governing standards body.

Why Special Characters Must Be Escaped

Because semicolons and commas are the format's own field and value separators, a network name or password that happens to contain one — a guest network named Office,Floor 2, for instance — would silently break the parser if left as-is: the unescaped comma would be misread as the boundary between two entirely different fields, corrupting everything that follows it. The specification handles this by requiring five characters to be escaped with a preceding backslash wherever they appear inside a value: backslash itself (\ → \\), semicolon (; → \;), comma (, → \,), colon (: → \:), and double quote (" → \"). This tool applies that escaping automatically to both the network name and the password before encoding, so you can safely use any characters your router accepts.

Keep in mind this is a static code: it embeds today's password directly into the image, so if the Wi-Fi password ever changes, this exact code stops working and you'll need to generate a new one. It's also worth noting that although WPA3 is now common on newer routers, this tool — like most Wi-Fi QR generators — still encodes WPA3 networks with T:WPA, since the format predates WPA3 and every scanner already treats that value as "use the standard password handshake," which functions correctly regardless of whether the router is actually running WPA2 or WPA3. Everything happens locally in your browser — the network name and password are never transmitted anywhere, which matters since you're encoding a live credential rather than a public link.