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Comment by rreichel03 | Hacker News Reader

This is really neat! I’ve wanted to know the QR code contents a few times without actually scanning with my phone so I actually built a super simple app to do this. Nothing fancy, just dumping the raw contents of the code to a string.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/barcode-qr-scanner-rawcode/id1...

Happy to add any features folks might be interested in!

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I thought I’d take a quick look to see what your app offers.

Here’s some feedback:

* On launch, it asks for Camera permission. I declined and the app crashed. Next launch, it opens to the blank screen with a (scan) icon and an Edit option, both on the top right. Tap on the scan icon and the app crashes. Tap on Edit and it changes to Done (there are no previous scans, obviously). It should ideally provide instructions to enable Camera permissions in the Settings app and also say why it needs it and how it’ll be used.

* The App Privacy section for your app declares that it collects usage data and diagnostic data. It would be good to know more details of what’s collected (preferably in the app description). Generally, people wouldn’t expect such a (simple use case) app to collect and transmit information (unless they explicitly ask for it to be done).

Use a better QR scanner app. I use Privacy Friendly Apps' "Privacy Friendly QR Scanner", which always presents you with the scanned URL or text in the app before doing anything, and asks you to verify that you want to visit the site. It also includes the ability to generate your own QR codes.

See https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/105.php for that and other apps developed by that research group.

It's not very good, I just tried it on an image and it didn't work. The built-in iPhone QR code reader inside the camera app could pick it up without any issues.

Just FYI, you can also do this with the inbuilt Shortcuts app - create a shortcut to scan a QR code then copy its contents to the clipboard for example.

Super interested. As with most things Apple, the lack of control is infuriating, and I hate how the QR scanner auto visits the scanned link rather than just decoding the data.

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