How to scan a QR code on your screen on Mac

macOS doesn’t have a built-in way to read a QR code that’s on your Mac’s screen. Live Text in Preview and Photos copies text and links from images, but Apple doesn’t document it reading QR codes, so the usual native workaround is to point your iPhone’s Camera at the display. To read it on the Mac itself, press ⌘⇧B in hypershot: it freezes the screen, decodes every QR code and barcode it can see, and copies the result (or gives you Copy and Open buttons if there’s more than one).

The built-in way

There isn’t a single “scan QR code” command on the Mac, so the native options are workarounds:

• Use your iPhone. Open the Camera app and point it at the screen. The iPhone reads the code and offers to open the link. Reliable, but now the link is on your phone, not your Mac. If it’s a web page and you use Safari on both, Handoff can pass it back.
• Live Text. Preview, Photos and Quick Look recognize text, links, phone numbers and email addresses in images. If the page shows the URL in text next to the code, Live Text will copy that. For the code itself, don’t count on it: Apple’s developer documentation for Live Text says its QR and barcode detection is ignored on macOS.
• Siri AI on macOS 27. If you have it turned on (it’s in beta, on Apple silicon Macs), ⌘⇧6 lets you select part of the screen and ask Siri or search for it. Apple’s documentation doesn’t list QR codes among what it handles, so treat it as worth a try, not a reader.

Outside of macOS, Chrome’s Search with Google Lens (in the ⋮ menu, or by right-clicking the page) lets you drag over part of a web page, and Lens generally recognizes QR codes. It only covers what’s in Chrome, and it sends your selection to Google to look it up.

With hypershot: scan codes

1. Press ⌘⇧B, or choose Scan codes (QR / barcode) from the menu bar menu or the Quick Access Panel.
2. Every connected screen freezes, and hypershot decodes every QR code and barcode it can see on all of them.
3. Each code gets a callout with its contents and a Copy button. Links also get Open, which opens them in your browser. If there’s exactly one code, it’s already on your clipboard.
4. Press Escape, or click empty space, to close.

There’s no box to draw. Everything visible gets read in one pass.

What it does that the workarounds don’t

• Reads it where it is. A code in a slide, a PDF, a video call, an email, a web page: if it’s on screen, it’s in scope. The result lands on your Mac’s clipboard, not your phone.
• Barcodes too. Besides QR codes, the decoder handles common barcode formats such as Code 128, EAN-13, Data Matrix and PDF417.
• Freezes first. Codes are read from a still frame, so a code in a playing video or an animation doesn’t blur past recognition. Nothing extra to press.
• Shows you before you go. You see the decoded contents in the callout before choosing Open, which matters with QR codes, since you can’t read the link by looking at the squares.
• Remembers what you used. Codes you copy or open are listed under Recent Codes in the menu bar menu. Wi-Fi and one-time-password codes are never kept, and you can turn the history off in Settings → Captures → Scan codes history.
• Stays on your Mac. The decoding is built into hypershot, not a web service, and it works identically on Windows.

Full details are in the QR code scanning docs.

If a code won’t scan

• Make it bigger. Zoom the page or the PDF so the code is larger on screen, then scan again.
• Show all of it. A code cut off by a window edge or covered by the cursor won’t decode. Move things out of the way first.
• Mind the screen share. A code in a low-resolution video stream can be too soft to read. Ask the presenter to paste the link, or wait for a sharper frame.

Is it safe to open a QR code link?

A QR code is a link you can’t read until it’s decoded, so look at the decoded URL before you open it. Check the domain is the one you expect. hypershot shows the full contents in the callout first, which is where that check belongs.

Can I copy the text from the image too?

Yes, that’s a different capture: see how to copy text from a screenshot or image on Mac. On Windows, see how to scan a QR code on your screen on Windows.