How to Create a Wi-Fi QR Code (And Why the Password Format Matters)

Make a QR code that connects guests to your Wi-Fi with one scan. How the WIFI: format works, why special characters break most generators, and how to test it properly.

A Wi-Fi QR code lets someone join your network by pointing a camera at a card on the wall. No spelling out Xr7$kL9!mQ across a noisy room, no writing the password on a whiteboard where it stays for three years.

It works because both iOS and Android understand a specific text format. Encode that format into a QR code and the camera app offers to join the network directly.

Generate a Wi-Fi QR code now →

The format

A Wi-Fi QR code contains a single line of text that looks like this:

WIFI:T:WPA;S:Moxu-Guest;P:hunter2;;

Four parts do the work:

The string ends with two semicolons. That isn't a typo — the format terminates with an empty field.

Use WPA for anything modern. It covers WPA, WPA2 and WPA3; there's no separate WPA3 value, and devices negotiate the actual protocol themselves. WEP exists only for legacy hardware, and if you're still running WEP, the QR code is not your most pressing problem.

The part most generators get wrong

Five characters are reserved delimiters in this format:

\    ;    ,    :    "

If your password contains any of them, they must be escaped with a backslash. Otherwise the parser hits the character and stops reading early.

Say your Wi-Fi password is p:ssw,rd. Encoded naively:

WIFI:T:WPA;S:Cafe;P:p:ssw,rd;;

The phone reads P:p and treats the rest as malformed. The scan appears to work — a network prompt even appears — and then authentication fails with no useful error. Correctly escaped:

WIFI:T:WPA;S:Cafe;P:p\:ssw\,rd;;

This is the single most common reason a Wi-Fi QR code "just doesn't work", and it's worth checking before you print 200 table cards. Passwords ending in a backslash are especially prone to it.

Our generator escapes all five characters automatically, in both the SSID and the password. You can paste a password with any symbols in it and the output stays valid.

Step by step

1. Open the generator and select the Wi-Fi tab.
2. Enter the SSID exactly as it appears in your device's network list. Moxu Guest, Moxu-Guest and moxu guest are three different networks as far as the code is concerned.
3. Choose the security type. If unsure, it's WPA.
4. Enter the password. Don't worry about special characters.
5. Tick Hidden network only if the SSID genuinely isn't broadcast. Ticking it unnecessarily makes connection slower and less reliable.
6. Download the PNG, or export SVG if it's going to print.

Test it before you print it

Test on a phone that is not currently connected to the network. This trips up nearly everyone: an already-connected phone will appear to succeed no matter what the code contains, because it simply reconnects to a remembered network.

The reliable test:

1. Forget the network on your phone (don't just disconnect).
2. Turn Wi-Fi off and on.
3. Scan the code.
4. Confirm it joins and actually loads a page.

Test both an iPhone and an Android device if you can. And if the final artefact is printed, test the printed version — screens are backlit and much more forgiving than ink on card.

A word on security

Anyone who can see the code can join the network. That's the entire point, but it has consequences worth thinking through:

• A photo of the code is the password. Someone can photograph a card in a café window from the pavement and connect from outside.
• Printed codes never expire. If you rotate the Wi-Fi password, every printed card becomes silently useless.
• Use a guest network. Most routers can run an isolated guest SSID that has internet access but can't reach your printers, NAS, cameras or laptops. Put the QR code on that, never on your main network.

For a home network shared with visiting friends, none of this matters much. For a business, the guest-network point is not optional.

Common problems

"Nothing happens when I scan it." Older Android versions (below 10) don't handle Wi-Fi codes in the default camera app. Try Google Lens, or the camera's built-in QR mode.

"It says the network can't be found." The SSID doesn't match exactly — check capitalisation and hyphens versus spaces. Or the network is 5 GHz-only and the phone is an older 2.4 GHz device.

"It connects but there's no internet." The code worked. The problem is upstream — captive portal, expired DHCP lease, or the connection itself.

"It worked on my phone but not a guest's." Almost always the "already connected" trap above. Re-test properly on a device that has never joined.

Printing it

For a card on a table or a sticker by the door, aim for at least 3 cm (1.2 inches) square. Wi-Fi payloads are longer than a typical URL, so the code has more modules packed into the same space — meaning it needs more physical room than a short link would.

Keep the quiet zone (the blank margin) intact. Designers trim it constantly to make things fit, and it breaks scanning. Full detail in our QR code print size guide.

If it's going to a professional printer, send SVG rather than PNG — a vector stays sharp at any size.

Ready to make one? The Wi-Fi generator is free, escapes special characters correctly, and previews the exact string it encodes so you can see what you're getting.