If you need to share a long, complex URL with a colleague or customer who is standing right next to you, reading the URL aloud or typing it manually into their phone is incredibly inefficient. A much faster method is to generate a QR code that they can simply scan with their smartphone camera.
Instead of relying on sketchy, ad-filled third-party websites to generate these codes, you can use a native tool built directly into the Google Chrome browser.
How to Enable the QR Code Generator
Depending on your exact version of Chrome, this feature might be hidden behind the experimental flags menu.
- Open Google Chrome on your desktop computer.
- Click the main address bar, type
chrome://flags, and press Enter. - In the “Search flags” box at the top of the page, type QR Code.
- Look for the specific flag named Enable sharing page via QR Code.
- Click the dropdown menu next to it and select Enabled.
- Click the blue Relaunch button that appears at the bottom of the screen to restart Chrome.
How to Generate and Share a Code
Now that the tool is active, generating a code takes less than a second.
- Navigate to the exact webpage you want to share (e.g., a specific product page or a Google Doc).
- Click once directly inside the main URL address bar to highlight the text.
- Look at the far-right side of the address bar. You will see a new icon that looks like a small square with four smaller squares inside it.
- Click the QR Code icon.
A small panel will drop down displaying a large, instantly generated QR code containing the exact URL of your current page. A colleague can now point their iPhone or Android camera directly at your computer monitor to scan the code and instantly open the link on their device.
Downloading the Code
If you want to place this QR code on a physical flyer or print it on a business card, simply click the Download button located directly beneath the generated code in the drop-down panel. Chrome will save a clean, high-resolution PNG image of the QR code directly to your Downloads folder.