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Comment by unreal37 | Hacker News Reader

> Restaurants are investing heavily in QR codes.

Investing heavily in them? What does that even mean? QR codes are free. I haven't seen one relating to restaurants menu items, in my life.

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It feels to me like QR codes for public use have completely died. They exploded about 5 years ago while people would just scan marketing posters for the gimmick of scanning a qr code but I doubt anyone does that anymore.

A lot of people in the US don't even know how to scan a QR code, and for the longest time (maybe still now?) the most popular mobile phone OSes didn't come with a built-in scanner.

From what I can tell, Android can't by default and iOS can but I think its disabled by default.

My pixel can scan qr codes by default through the camera

Ah interesting. I used a pixel for a while and I never knew that was a feature so I assume most users don't either.

The last several generations of Samsung phones have had QR code scanning built into the camera app.

I presume you're talking about America, since I can assure you that in Asia QR codes are alive and well. In China in particular everything is done with QR.

I'm talking about Australia here but I imagine its the same in both countries. QR codes used to be on every poster but now the only place I see them is on the front of the apple store so you don't have to walk in (which is a process right now)

I think what killed them here is that android didn't bundle a qr code scanner by default and they never contained anything that the user actually wanted, they were just for marketers to get people on their site.

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