[XorNot]

What driving me nuts is that we still don't have a widely deployed standard for this though.

Work gave me an iPhone recently and I was shocked the wifi initial connection screen had no option to scan a QR code. It took Android way too long to get this as well.

But on top of that, even when the option is there it's so limited - i.e. it gets presented as "must be a wifi QR code" without the option to just fill a text box from a plain text one (although on reflection I'm now wondering why that's not just a global UX option on phones).

[coder543]

On iPhone, WiFi QR codes work just fine. You just open the camera app, and point the phone at the QR code. They're automatically detected and scanned, the same as any other normal QR code. (No, you can't open the camera app during initial setup... but, it's not for a lack of the standard or the feature.)

[frizlab]

If I’m not mistaken iOS can scan the text directly from the text field though (not a very well known feature).

[coder543]

Also true. Tap on any text field. In the menu where the "paste" option lives, there is also a Scan Text option. I've used that for a number of things over the years.

[frizlab]

I’ve just setup a new phone, this is not enabled during the phone setup for some reason…

[ajsnigrutin]

With 5g less and less people use random wifi hotspots, and for home locations, phone manufacturers assume that it's easier for the user to just type in the password than to generate qr codes for their new phone every few years.

[lxgr]

It's still very common for guests to connect to the host's Wi-Fi, as not nearly everybody has unlimited data, and not every home has good 5G coverage.

QR codes are a convenient way to make that happen.