QRTOOL-DECODE(1) General Commands Manual QRTOOL-DECODE(1)

qrtool-decode - detect and decode a QR code

qrtool decode [OPTION]... [IMAGE]

This command detects and decodes a QR code https://www.qrcode.com from a raster or vector image. By default, the result will be output to standard output.

Supported image file formats

•BMP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_file_format (if enabled at compile time)
•DDS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectDraw_Surface (if enabled at compile time)
•Farbfeld https://tools.suckless.org/farbfeld (if enabled at compile time)
•GIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF (if enabled at compile time)
•Radiance RGBE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGBE_image_format (if enabled at compile time)
•ICO <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICO_(file_format)> (if enabled at compile time)
•JPEG https://jpeg.org/jpeg (if enabled at compile time)
•OpenEXR https://openexr.com (if enabled at compile time)
•PNG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNG
•PNM https://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/pnm.html (if enabled at compile time)
•QOI https://qoiformat.org (if enabled at compile time)
•SVG https://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG (if enabled at compile time)
•TGA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truevision_TGA (if enabled at compile time)
•TIFF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIFF (if enabled at compile time)
•WebP https://developers.google.com/speed/webp (if enabled at compile time)
•XBM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_BitMap (if enabled at compile time)

Use -t option to specify the image format. If this option is not specified, the image format is determined based on the extension or the magic number.


Caution

This command only supports decoding a
normal QR code https://www.qrcode.com/codes/model12.html, and does not support decoding a Micro QR code https://www.qrcode.com/codes/microqr.html and a rMQR code https://www.qrcode.com/codes/rmqr.html.

IMAGE

Input image file. If IMAGE is not specified, or if "-" is specified, the image will be read from standard input. Supported raster image formats are based on the formats supported by the image https://crates.io/crates/image crate. The format of IMAGE is determined based on the extension or the magic number if possible. If the format cannot be determined, use --type. Note that the SVG image is rasterized before scanning.

-t, --type FORMAT

The format of the input. If FORMAT is not specified, the format is determined based on the extension or the magic number.

The possible values are:

bmp

Windows Bitmap. This value is available if the decode-from-bmp feature is enabled at compile time.

dds

DirectDraw Surface. This value is available if the decode-from-dds feature is enabled at compile time.

farbfeld

Farbfeld. This value is available if the decode-from-ff feature is enabled at compile time.

gif

Graphics Interchange Format. This value is available if the decode-from-gif feature is enabled at compile time.

hdr

Radiance RGBE. This value is available if the decode-from-hdr feature is enabled at compile time.

ico

ICO file format. This value also includes the CUR file format. This value is available if the decode-from-ico feature is enabled at compile time.

jpeg

JPEG. This value is available if the decode-from-jpeg feature is enabled at compile time.

openexr

OpenEXR. This value is available if the decode-from-exr feature is enabled at compile time.

png

Portable Network Graphics.

pnm

Portable Anymap Format. This value is available if the decode-from-pnm feature is enabled at compile time.

qoi

Quite OK Image Format. This value is available if the decode-from-qoi feature is enabled at compile time.

svg

Scalable Vector Graphics. This value also includes the gzip-compressed SVG image. This value is available if the decode-from-svg feature is enabled at compile time.

tga

Truevision TGA. This value is available if the decode-from-tga feature is enabled at compile time.

tiff

Tag Image File Format. This value is available if the decode-from-tiff feature is enabled at compile time.

webp

WebP. This value is available if the decode-from-webp feature is enabled at compile time.

xbm

X BitMap. This value is available if the decode-from-xbm feature is enabled at compile time.

--verbose

Also print the metadata. It is output to stderr. This option conflicts with --metadata.

--metadata

Print only the metadata. It is output to stderr. This option conflicts with --verbose.

-h, --help

Print help message. The short flag (-h) will print a condensed help message while the long flag (--help) will print a detailed help message.

-V, --version

Print version number.

0

Successful program execution.

1

An error occurred.

2

An error occurred while parsing command-line arguments.

Exit statuses other than these are defined by <sysexits.h> https://man.openbsd.org/sysexits.

Source repository:

https://github.com/sorairolake/qrtool

Detect and decode a QR code from the given image:

$ qrtool decode input.png

Decode a QR code from the given WebP image:

$ qrtool decode -t webp input.webp

Also print the metadata when decoding a QR code:

$ qrtool decode --verbose input.qoi

Report bugs to:

https://github.com/sorairolake/qrtool/issues

Copyright © 2022 Shun Sakai and contributors

1.This program is distributed under the terms of either the Apache License 2.0 or the MIT License.
2.This manual page is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

qrtool(1), qrtool-completion(1), qrtool-encode(1), zbarimg(1)

2025-11-28 qrtool 0.13.2