The only type with no dependency at all
Every other code on this site points somewhere. A link needs a page, a WiFi code needs a network, a vCard needs a contacts app. A text code needs nothing: the information is the code.
That has two consequences worth understanding.
It cannot break. There is no destination to move, rename, expire or take offline. A text code scanned in twenty years shows what it showed on the day it was printed.
It cannot change. Reprinting is the only way to edit it. That is a real cost, and it is why text codes suit facts rather than announcements — a serial number stays true, a set of opening hours does not.
Where it genuinely wins
- Asset and inventory tags — an ID that means something to your system, on a label that has to survive a workshop. Short payload, coarse pattern, reads off scratched metal.
- Places with no signal — basements, warehouses, tunnels, cold stores, remote sites. A link code in a cellar is a picture of a failure.
- Serial numbers and part codes — copied into a system rather than opened, so a link would be an extra step in the wrong direction.
- WiFi passwords for equipment that will not take a properWiFi code — the text is at least copyable.
- Anything a cautious person will scan — a text code opens nothing, so it is the one square nobody has to think twice about.
Length is the constraint
The specification allows around 4,000 characters. Ignore that number — it describes what is possible, not what is printable. Every character adds modules, and modules shrink at a fixed physical size:
- Under 50 characters — a coarse code that reads off almost anything.
- 50–150 — comfortable at label size.
- 150–300 — needs a bigger print and a clean surface.
- Beyond 300 — you want a page and a link to it.
The generator shows the version and a suggested minimum print size as you type. That number is more useful than any character count, because it accounts for what you actually typed.
What it is not for
Anything that changes. Opening hours, prices, phone extensions, staff names, event dates — all of these look like good candidates and all of them will be wrong within a year, permanently, on however many things you printed.
For those, point a code at a page you control and change the page. Astatic code holding an address gives you editable content without giving anyone else control of the code.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere
True of every code here, but worth saying on this page in particular: the text is encoded in your browser and never transmitted. That matters because text codes are where people put internal identifiers, asset references and occasionally things they should not — none of which reaches us, because there is no request to reach us with.