Customizing your QR code
Frames & Captions
A border, a caption, or both, drawn around the finished code. Useful anywhere nothing else on the page says what the code is for.
Where it is
In the Advanced section, at the top: a Frame dropdown, and a Frame text box that appears when you pick a style that has a caption. How the panel is organized.
Why bother
A bare QR code on a poster asks a stranger to point their camera at an anonymous square. People have been told for years to be careful about that, and they are right to be.
A caption is the cheapest answer. SCAN ME tells someone the code is meant for them; MENU, WI-FI or PAY HERE tells them what happens next. That is the difference between a code people use and a code people walk past.
A border does a quieter job: it separates the code from whatever is printed around it, which also protects the quiet zone. A code with something busy right up against its edge is harder to read, and a frame keeps that space by construction. See scan reliability tips.
The eight styles
| Style | What you get | Caption |
|---|---|---|
| No frame | The code on its own. The default. | — |
| Border | A square outline around the code. | — |
| Rounded border | The same outline with rounded corners. | — |
| Caption below | A bar of text under the code, no outline. | Yes |
| Caption above | The same bar, over the code. | Yes |
| Border + caption | Square outline with a caption bar. | Yes |
| Rounded + caption | Rounded outline with a caption bar. | Yes |
| Banner with pointer | A caption bar with a notch pointing at the code. | Yes |
The Frame text box only appears for the five styles that have somewhere to put text, so the control is never offered where it would do nothing. Captions are capped at 40 characters: a frame is a label, and a sentence set at that size is unreadable at the distance anyone scans from.
The code itself is untouched
A frame is drawn around the code, never over it. The canvas grows to make room; the modules, the quiet zone and the error correction are all exactly what they would have been without it. So unlike a logo, a frame costs you nothing in scannability. Logos are the opposite case, and it is worth knowing why they differ.
That also means the download size you choose still describes the code. A framed export is larger than the number in the dropdown, because the frame is added around a code of exactly that size rather than shrinking the code to fit.
Frames in every format
The frame is part of the exported file in all six formats, and in the vector ones it is real vector artwork rather than a picture of a frame: PDF, SVG and EPS get actual shapes and live text, so a printer can scale them to any size without softening.
That matters most where frames matter most. A poster or a menu card is usually printed from a PDF, and a caption that turns fuzzy at A2 defeats the point of having one.
Practical notes
- Short beats descriptive. "SCAN ME" is read at a glance from across a room. "Scan this code to view our menu" is a sentence nobody reads while walking past.
- Say what happens, not what to do, where you can. "MENU" and "WI-FI" answer the question people actually have.
- The banner style points. Its notch aims at the code, which helps when a page has more than one thing on it.
- Test the framed export, not the preview. The frame changes the overall size, so a code that was comfortably large on screen can end up smaller on the page than you meant. Minimum size and the sizing guide both apply to the code inside the frame, not to the frame.
Frequently asked questions
Can I change the frame's color?
Not separately. The frame follows the code's own colors, so it stays consistent with whatever you have chosen and cannot accidentally be set to something that clashes with the background it sits on.
Is the caption saved with the code?
Yes. Save a code to your library and the frame and its text come back with it, the same as the colors and shapes. Saved QR Code Library.
Do the phone apps have frames?
Not yet. Frames are a website feature; the iPhone, iPad and Android apps have every other styling control but no frame picker. A code you framed on the web and saved will open in the app without the frame rather than with a broken one.
Does a frame count against the logo coverage limit?
No. That limit is about area taken out of the code, and a frame takes none: it sits outside. You can use a frame and a logo together, and only the logo spends any of the error-correction budget.