Filestay

QR & text tools

Generate QR codes and work with text without an account, a redirect or a tracking pixel.

Static codes, and why that is the point

There are two kinds of QR code, and the difference matters more than most people realise.

A static code stores your content directly in the pattern. Scan it and the destination is literally what is printed. It cannot be changed, tracked or turned off, and it works forever.

A dynamic code stores a short link belonging to the service that made it. Every scan goes through their server, which is how they count scans — and also how they can change where the code points, put an interstitial in front of it, or stop serving it when a subscription lapses.

Free QR generators overwhelmingly produce dynamic codes, often without saying so. If you have ever seen a printed menu whose QR code now leads to a "this code has expired, upgrade to continue" page, you have met the business model.

Our generator makes static codes only. We cannot track scans and we cannot break your code later, because neither is technically possible with what it produces.

Printing codes that actually scan

Two rules cover most failures. First, size: scanning distance is roughly ten times the code's width, so a 2 cm code works at arm's length and a poster read from three metres needs about 30 cm. Second, the quiet zone: the blank margin around the code is part of the specification, not decoration — scanners use it to find the code's edge. Four modules' width is the minimum, and cropping it away is the single most common reason a printed code fails.

Keep dark modules on a light background, too. Inverting it looks striking and fails on a lot of readers.

The text side

The word and character counter is deliberately plain: live counts, reading and speaking time estimates, and seven case conversions. What it does not do is send your text anywhere, which is worth stating because a surprising number of free writing tools post every keystroke to a server for "suggestions", and people paste some very sensitive text into word counters.

Questions people actually ask

Do the QR codes expire?
No. The code encodes your content directly — there is no redirect through our domain and no short link. A code made here works forever, including long after Filestay stops existing. Dynamic QR services can expire, be switched off, or quietly change where your code points; static codes cannot.
Can you see what I type?
No. The QR matrix is computed in this page and drawn as SVG; the word counter runs entirely on the text in the box. Nothing is transmitted, which also means nothing is autosaved — close the tab and it is gone.
Why does a QR code with a logo still scan?
QR codes carry Reed–Solomon error correction. At level H, which is what this generator always uses, roughly 30% of the code can be obscured and still reconstructed. The logo covers about 22%, leaving headroom for a crease, a coffee ring or a bad camera angle.
How accurate is the word count?
It counts runs of non-whitespace separated by whitespace, which matches how Microsoft Word counts for ordinary prose. Tools disagree at the edges — hyphenated compounds, numbers with symbols, em dashes without spaces — so if you are writing to a hard limit that someone else will check, find out which tool they use.