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Email QR Code Generator

Open a pre-addressed email with the subject and body already filled in.

  • Free, with no account
  • Static — it never expires
  • Encoded on your device

Pre-filling the subject is what makes these codes useful — it routes the mail before anyone types a word.

A short template with blanks works far better than a long paragraph.

Cc and Bcc

Separate several addresses with commas. Remember that a printed bcc is not private.

Only non-personal fields go into the link.

Export

SVG has no resolution at all — it is the right choice for anything that will be printed.

Appearance & encoding

Higher levels survive damage and allow a bigger logo, but make the symbol denser.

The specification requires 4. Below that, decoders often fail to find the symbol at all.

Centre logo

PNG, JPG, SVG or WebP up to 512 KB. The file is read in this tab and never uploaded.

The safe maximum depends on the symbol size, not just the error-correction level — the check below works it out for the code you actually have.

Print readiness

Generate a code to see its minimum printed size.

What is actually encoded

What gets encoded

The payload is a mailto: URI — the same thing sitting behind an email link on a web page, defined by RFC 6068. For the example above it comes out as:

mailto:hello@example.com?subject=Table%20booking&body=Hi%20%E2%80%94%20I%20would...

The address comes first. Everything after the ? is percent-encoded, which is why spaces appear as %20 and a line break as %0A. Your mail app decodes all of that before it shows you the draft.

A printed A5 flyer on a wooden counter with a QR Code beside the heading Ask us a question
Pre-filling the subject line is the whole point: the mail arrives already sorted into the right queue.

Where a pre-filled email beats a form

A web form needs a page, a backend, spam protection and a place to put the submissions. A mailto: code needs none of that, and it lands in an inbox you already watch. It is the right tool when the volume is low and the reply is a human one.

  • Table booking or enquiry cards. Subject pre-set, body as a short template with blanks to fill.
  • Support stickers on equipment. Put the model and serial in the subject so the reply does not start with three clarifying questions.
  • Event feedback. A code at the exit with Subject: Feedback — Spring Session gets replies a survey link will not.
  • Conference posters. Academics reliably have a mail app and unreliably have your preferred messenger.

Do not put a personal address on a public code

Anything printed in public can be photographed, extracted and reused. Use a role address — hello@, support@, bookings@ — that you can filter, hand over, or retire without changing your own.

Keeping the body short

The body is the part that inflates the payload, and a dense symbol is a symbol that fails on a phone held at an angle in a dim room. A four-line template of about 60 characters is comfortable. A three-paragraph introduction is not. If you need the person to read a lot before writing, link them to a page with the URL tool and let the page carry a mail link.

Limits worth knowing

  • No attachments. The mailto: scheme cannot carry files, and no client would accept one from a URI if it could.
  • No HTML formatting. The body is plain text. Line breaks survive; bold does not.
  • Behaviour varies by client. Most respect subject and body; a few web-mail handlers drop cc or bcc.
  • A device with no mail account does nothing. A phone with no configured mailbox will either prompt for setup or ignore the scan.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does scanning it send the email automatically?
No, and it must not. The code opens a draft in the person's mail app with the fields already filled in. They read it and decide whether to press send. No scanner will send mail on a user's behalf, which is exactly the behaviour you want.
Which mail app opens?
Whichever one is set as the default handler for mailto: on that device — Mail on a stock iPhone, Gmail on most Android phones, Outlook where a company has configured it. You have no control over which, and you should not need any.
Why is my pre-filled body cut short?
Some mail clients cap how much of a mailto: body they will accept, and a long body makes the QR Code dense as well. Two or three short lines is the practical maximum. Anything longer belongs on a web page you link to instead.
Can I add multiple recipients, cc or bcc?
Yes. Separate several addresses with commas in any field. Bear in mind that everything you put in a printed code is visible to anyone who scans it — a bcc address is not secret once it is encoded in ink.
Will this attract spam?
A printed code is not crawlable, so it does not expose the address the way a mailto link on a web page does. Anyone who photographs the poster can extract it, so treat a public code as a public address — a shared inbox like hello@ is a better choice than a personal one.
How do I pre-fill a subject with a reference number?
Put it in the subject field: Support — order #{ORDER}. For a per-item reference you need a per-item code, which means generating one code per order rather than one for the whole print run.

Keep going

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