About

QRtist lets you add artwork to a QR code. Paste a URL, draw a little pixel art, and download the result. Everything runs in your browser - nothing is ever uploaded anywhere.

How it works

• Paste a URL. This is what the QR code points to. Longer URLs pack in more data, which leaves more room for your artwork to show through.
• Draw your art. Click or drag across the grid to toggle pixels on and off. Switch between small, medium, and large canvases - your design is preserved and re-centered when you resize.
• Need a starting point? Hit “Surprise me” for a random shape, or upload an image and QRtist will trace it onto the grid right in your browser.
• Preview and save. The QR code updates live as you edit. Generation happens locally in your browser using WebAssembly when supported, making it fast and private. When you're happy, download it as a PNG or SVG, or copy a link that restores your exact design.
• Share a link. By default the link encodes everything in the query string - nothing is saved on our servers. For long designs you can shorten the link: your settings are encrypted server-side, and the decryption key stays only in the URL (we never store it).

Why it's private

There are no accounts, no logging, and no tracking. QR code generation happens locally in your browser using WebAssembly when supported, otherwise it falls back to our servers. A normal share link is entirely self-contained in the browser - we never see your URL or pixel art (except when server fallback is used). Optional short links are the only time data touches our servers, and then only as ciphertext; without the key in the link, the blob is useless.

The site is served through Cloudflare, which may cache pages and other responses at the edge for performance.

See the privacy policy for more detail on short links and what we retain.

It was inspired by A Problem Squared, the podcast by Matt Parker and Bec Hill where listeners bla, bla, bla...