Everyone carries a smartphones these days. Your smartphones come equipped with one or other QR code reader. If your smartphone does not come with a QR reader, then you can easily download a free one from Google Play (for Android) or Apple Store (for iPhone). These QR reader apps are very useful, you can quickly scan and decode QR codes that seem to popup everywhere nowadays on newspapers, websites, flyers, stores and more. But when it comes to Windows, there is no QR reader app that can scan the QR code on screen and decode it. But now CodeTwo Desktop QR Reader has come to fill this void. It is a freeware QR Reader program for Windows.
QR Codes may contain text, links (to websites, videos or files), email addresses, phone numbers, vcards that automatically update your contacts on your PC or a mobile phone, or any other text message in them. The CodeTwo Desktop QR Reader adds the QR decoding functionality in Windows so that you can find out whats hidden in a QR code even when you are nowhere near your smartphone. It is able to decode the QR codes from picture files but it can also capture your screen and then automatically decode the displayed QR code just like a smartphone.
You can download CodeTwo Desktop QR Code Reader from the CodeTwo website. The download is around 4.5 megabytes in size. It is designed using Microsoft .NET 2.0 framework, so you may have to install the .NET 2.0 redistributable in Windows for using this application. After installation the CodeTwo Desktop QR Code Reader starts automatically.
Using CodeTwo Desktop QR Code Reader is very easy. You can click on the From file button to open an image file containing your QR code. If you do not have such an image, then you can generate your own QR code using Kaywa online tool. You can also click on the From Screen button to capture a region of your screen that contains the QR code. The Desktop QR Code Reader will automatically decode the QR code and show its contents in the textbox. You can either copy the decoded text or save it to a file.
CodeTwo Desktop QR Code Reader is great for decoding the QR codes we often find on various websites and soemtimes in our email messages too. Even if you do not have a smartphone capable of decoding the QR code, you can take the picture of the QR code you find somewhere (like in coffeeshop, in a tattoo or someone’s T-shirt) and then come home and decode it on your Windows computer.
You can download CodeTwo Desktop QR Code Reader from https://www.codetwo.com/freeware/qr-code-desktop-reader/.