The Unwanted Dinosaur
Google Chrome occasionally introduces new features aimed at seamless sharing. One such feature is the built-in QR code generator. When you click the share icon in the address bar (the omnibox) or right-click on a page, Chrome presents an option to “Create QR code for this page,” complete with the little Chrome dinosaur in the center. While useful for quickly transferring a URL from your desktop to your mobile phone, the option clutters the sharing menu. If you use third-party URL shorteners or dedicated sharing extensions, having Chrome automatically generate and suggest a QR code for every page you want to share is unnecessary bloat.
Disabling the QR Code Generator Flag
To clean up your context menus and stop Google Chrome from automatically generating and offering QR codes for sharing, you must disable the specific experimental feature flag that controls it.
Because this feature is deeply integrated into the sharing hub, there is no simple toggle in the standard Settings menu. You must use the flags page. Open a new tab in Chrome, type chrome://flags into the address bar, and press Enter. This takes you to the experimental features area. In the search box at the very top of the page, type QR code. Look through the results for a flag titled something like “Desktop Sharing Hub” or specifically related to “QR Code generator” (the exact name fluctuates as Google updates the browser). Once you locate the flag responsible for the sharing hub QR code, click the dropdown menu next to it and change its status from “Default” or “Enabled” to Disabled. Chrome will prompt you to relaunch the browser at the bottom of the screen. Click Relaunch to apply the change.