Jan 19

Configure WiFi access / password via QR code, how does it work?

Category: Linux,WWW   — Published by goeszen on January 19, 2016 at 2:52 pm

If you've got an Android smartphone or device, it's quite probable that you've come in contact with a way of configuring WLAN access by scanning a QR code. WiFi password handshake via QR code is also quite common when your DSL router is a fritzbox - so you might know it from there. I don't know if there's a similar protocol or means of setting up WiFi login + password on the iPhone, apart from entering it manually.

Anyway, on Android there's such a facility. It is possible to configure your phone's login/password by scanning a QR tag which has the relevant credentials embedded. I don't know if this functionality is a very mature standard, or where the official docs reside, but it works by encoding a text string of the following format as a QR pattern:

String code = "WIFI:S:<network-ssid>;T:WPA;P:<wifi-wpa-key>;;";

Via. As you can see, it contains encryption standard, SSID, and password. If you'd like to encode your own, jump over to ZXing's QR code generator.

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