qrencode is a nice QR code CLI tool for Ubuntu Linux

There’s something fun about QR codes, and I wanted an easy way generate them as SVGs.

Sure enough there’s a tool in the Ubuntu repos to do that:

sudo apt install qrencode

It’s straightforward to use:

qrencode -t SVG -o qr-code.svg 'whatever you want encoded'

I wanted to generate a QR code to put on little business cards that we pack with the orders for our pop up card shop. The QR code should point to a URL including a discount coupon that gets automatically applied for customers who have arrived via that URL.

It’s easy with qrencode:

qrencode -t SVG -o poprobincards-qr-code.svg 'https://www.poprobincards.co.uk/?coupon=popup8'

And the result is a nice SVG QR code: