Checkered Chat
Open
Ordinary text in an ordinary code. Anyone’s camera reads it, which is sometimes exactly what you want.
iPhone · Apple Watch · iMessage
Chat using QR codes.
Write a message and turn it into a code — and, if you like, give it an alibi. Hold up your screen, put it on a sticker, or drop it into Messages. An open code reads in any camera; the rest only open here. No account to set up, no inbox to clear, and no server quietly keeping copies.
No account · No inbox · No server · One payment
Three steps. Not one of them asks for an email address.
- Write it. A message, a mode, and that is the whole composition step. The meter beside it says whether the code will survive at the size you mean to print it.
- Hand it over. Hold up your screen, save the picture, print a sheet of stickers, or send it in Messages. The code is the message, so however it travels is however it travels.
- They scan it. An open code opens in any camera. Everything else opens in Checkered Chat, which asks the question, lifts the cover, or gathers the pieces. Sent in Messages, a code opens with a tap instead — no camera at all, for anyone who has the app.
Five ways to say it. One way to show it.
Open and Locked are free. Decoy, Split and Animated are the unlock, and your first three are on the house.
Locked
A question only they can answer. “What did we have for breakfast?” — capitals and punctuation do not matter, because nobody remembers their own punctuation.
Decoy
Every other camera sees something dull and entirely plausible — a grocery list, a note about the dog. Checkered Chat shows what is really there. The cover is boring on purpose.
Split
One message across several codes, and you choose the arithmetic: any three of five open it, any two tell you nothing at all. Not less — nothing.
Animated
A message too long for one code, played as a set of frames the other phone catches in any order, with a ring that fills as they arrive.
Show mode
Full screen, full brightness, and a timer: show a code for five seconds and it clears itself. Turn the phone over and it is gone.
What it looks like.
Every one of these is the app itself, captured on a phone.
Right where you are already talking.
In Messages. Write a code in the app drawer and it goes straight into the conversation — no screenshotting, no second device. Anyone who has Checkered Chat taps the bubble and the message opens; no camera is involved at all. Everyone else sees a code they can point a camera at. With a decoy, that is the whole trick: what their camera reads is the cover story, and the real message sits underneath it, untouched.
A long message goes in as a set of frames, and the bubble plays them. That is not a picture Messages is showing you — the app draws it in the conversation itself. That is why a tap opens the message rather than a video player.
On your wrist. Send a code from your phone to the Watch and it draws it there, at the largest size the screen allows — a decoy, or a long message as a set of frames the Watch plays in turn. The Watch tells you when one arrives, and says only that one has: never the message, never a preview, not even the cover story. A lock screen is the most public thing you own.
Write a short one on the wrist with dictation or Scribble, in whichever way round your phone is set — choose white on black there and the wrist follows. Pin the ones you use often and a complication opens straight into them.
The Watch shows codes; it never reads them. There is no camera on a Watch, so the wrist is always the thing being read.
In Messages
On your wrist
Stickers that actually scan.
Codes are drawn as paths and exported as vector PDFs, so a two-inch sticker is two inches on paper — not two inches minus whatever the renderer rounded away. Every sheet in the catalog is measured from the manufacturer’s own published template rather than typed in from memory, and the app says which product each one came from. Sizes it has not measured are not in the list: for anything else, including A4 stock, you enter the measurements once and they are kept.
Printers drift, so there is an alignment sheet: print the outlines, hold them against a real sheet of labels, and nudge in half-millimeter steps. The nudge is kept for that stock, so it is found once.
Print at 100%. Everything else on this page is a preference; that one is arithmetic.
One fair price. Read everything for free.
$9.99 once — no subscription, no ads, nothing collected
Reading is always free. Scanning any code costs nothing — including a decoy somebody hands you, where your own camera reads the cover story and Checkered Chat reads what is underneath. Writing an open or locked message and showing it on your screen are free too.
And a code from here carries text and only text. Nothing in one is a link, so one handed to you by a stranger has nowhere to take you — which is not true of QR codes in general, and is the reason this is worth saying.
The unlock is for making the clever ones: decoys, split sets, animated sets, module shapes and frames, and sticker sheets. Your first three codes in a paid mode are on the house — three in total, spend them how you like.
There is no server to validate a receipt against, so the App Store is asked directly what your Apple Account owns. Restore purchases lives in About.
Privacy Policy
Last updated September 25, 2026
Checkered Chat collects nothing, sends nothing, and stores nothing about you. This is not a promise about careful handling. There is no data, and there is no networking code in the app to send it with.
What leaves your device
Nothing. There are no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising identifiers, no accounts and no server. Turn on airplane mode and the app behaves identically, because it never had anything to say to the network in the first place.
The only outward links are the ones in About — this page, support and terms — which open in your browser when you tap them. Tapping one leaves the app; nothing about you goes with it.
The camera
Checkered Chat asks for camera access because scanning a code is half the app. Frames are examined on the device, looking only for QR codes. Nothing is recorded, photographed, saved or transmitted.
Your photos
Importing a picture of a code uses the system picker, which hands the app the one picture you chose and nothing else — the app has no access to your library and never asks for it.
Saving a code to your photos asks for add-only permission the first time, which lets the app put a picture in and gives it no ability to read anything already there.
On your watch
If you send a code to an Apple Watch, the watch can tell you it arrived. That notification says “A code arrived” and nothing else — never the message, never a preview, not even the cover story of a decoy. A lock screen is the most public surface you own, and a message you had to make a code for does not belong on it. Reading it still means opening the app.
What is written to disk
Only settings, never messages. Whether you have seen the introduction. The printer alignment nudges you save on the sticker sheet screen, kept per sheet of stock so you do not have to find them twice. Whether you have bought the unlock, and how many of the three free codes you have used. And the mode and options you last chose in the Messages app, so it opens where you left it.
The look you last chose, too: module shape, the two colors, whether there is a center mark, how fast an animated set plays, and the size you are printing at. A house color you use every day should not have to be picked every day. What you wrote is not among them — not the message, not a decoy’s cover story, not a lock’s question. The app remembers that you like round modules in navy. It does not remember a word you put in one.
The last three are shared between the app and its Messages extension, because they are two separate programs that have to agree — otherwise the three free codes would be three in each, and buying the unlock in one would not unlock the other. Nothing you write or scan is among them. The Messages extension remembers that you last chose Decoy; it does not remember a single word of what you wrote.
Messages are never written down. What you write exists while you are writing it. What you scan exists while you are reading it, and is gone when you close it — there is no history, no inbox and no way to ask the app what it saw yesterday, because it did not keep it.
Your purchase is recorded by the App Store, as every purchase is. The app asks Apple what you own; it does not keep a record of its own and has no receipt server to check with.
Children
Checkered Chat collects no personal information from anyone, of any age. The listing is rated 18+ because it is not aimed at school-age readers, not because it gathers anything.
Changes
If any of this ever stops being true, this page changes first and the app's version notes will say so plainly. The date at the top is when this page last changed.
Who to ask
Checkered Chat is made by HoneyWired LLC in Chicago, Illinois. Questions about this policy, or about anything above, go to support@honeywired.com. There is no data of yours for us to show you, correct or delete — that is the whole of this page — but the address is a real one and it is read.
Terms & EULA
Last updated September 25, 2026
1. License
Checkered Chat is licensed, not sold, under Apple's standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement, for use across the devices connected to your Apple Account. The paid features are a one-time purchase with no recurring charges and no subscription.
That agreement is the license. What follows supplements it with the things particular to this app, and where the two ever disagree, Apple's governs.
2. Age
Checkered Chat is intended for adults, and the App Store listing is rated 18+. That rating is deliberately higher than the app's content would earn: there is nothing in it unsuitable for a younger reader — no accounts, no strangers, no content but your own — and it is not a warning about content. It is a statement about who the app is for. A message only one person can read is a fine thing between adults and a poor thing to hand around a school, and the rating says so in the place people look.
3. Not a security product
Checkered Chat is a toy. It is not encrypted messaging, not a password manager, and not a means of protecting sensitive information. A locked code can be guessed at indefinitely by whoever holds it. A decoy hides a message from a casual glance, not from anyone who examines what the code actually contains. Do not use any of it for something whose disclosure would matter.
4. Cryptography
Locked codes are closed using cryptography built into Apple's own operating systems — AES-GCM and PBKDF2, reached through Apple's CryptoKit and CommonCrypto frameworks. Checkered Chat writes none of its own, with one exception: the arithmetic that splits a key across several codes, which is Shamir's Secret Sharing — a scheme published in 1979 and implemented here from the published description, not invented for this app. None of this makes the app a security product; section 3 above is the plain truth and this section does not soften it.
Some countries restrict the import, use or export of software that performs cryptography. The app does not know or ask where you are. Using it in accordance with the law where you are is your responsibility.
5. Nothing is recoverable
The app keeps no copy of anything you write or scan. If you lose a code, the message in it is gone, and we cannot retrieve it — not as a policy, but because it was never anywhere but in your hands.
6. Screenshots and photographs
A code on a screen can be photographed, and a printed code can be picked up. The app tells you when a screenshot is taken while a code is showing; it cannot prevent one, and does not claim to.
7. Acceptable use
Checkered Chat is for notes between people who want to exchange them. Do not use it to harass, intimidate, frighten or follow anyone. Do not send codes to someone who has asked you to stop, and do not leave them where they are likely to be found by a person who would rather not have found them. Do not use it to break the law, or to carry anything it is illegal to hold or to pass on.
One thing deserves saying on its own, because it is the only misuse this app makes easier than it would otherwise be. A decoy exists so a message looks dull to everyone except its reader. It is not there to trick somebody into scanning something they would not have scanned, and it is not there to carry content past a person or a process whose job is to look at it. That is not what the cover story is for.
There is no report button, and the reason is worth saying plainly rather than hiding. Nothing you write reaches us: no server, no account, no copy. So there is nobody here who could read a reported code, and a button leading nowhere would be worse than no button. If somebody is using a code against you, the code itself is the evidence — keep it. Take it to whoever carried it: the platform the message arrived on, your school or workplace, or the police. A code inserted in Messages sits in a conversation Apple’s own reporting already covers.
What you write, who you hand it to, and where you leave it are yours.
8. Printing
Label measurements are taken from manufacturers' published templates and are provided as a convenience. Printers vary; check an alignment sheet before committing a sheet of stock, and print at 100%.
9. Disclaimer
The app is provided “as is”. HoneyWired LLC is not liable for messages that cannot be read, codes that do not scan, stock that prints out of alignment, or any loss arising from use of the app.
Nothing you make with the app passes through us — that is the design, not an oversight — and so what you make with it is yours to answer for. If a claim is brought against us over how you used it, that claim is yours to carry. To the extent the law where you live does not permit some part of this section, that part applies as far as it is permitted and the rest still stands.
10. Acknowledgments
Checkered Chat draws its codes with swift-qrcode-generator, an open-source encoder by Project Nayuki and fwcd, carried unmodified and used under the MIT license. The same notice appears in the app, under About. Its terms are reproduced here in full, as that license requires:
MIT License Copyright (c) Project Nayuki. (MIT License) Copyright (c) 2020 fwcd Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
This site sets its type in Archivo and JetBrains Mono, both used under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.
QR Code is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED. Neither DENSO WAVE nor Apple has any involvement in this app.
Support
Questions, bugs, a scanner that will not read a printed code, or an idea worth building — write to support@honeywired.com.
Two things help enormously: what the code was made in (Open, Locked, Decoy, Split or Animated), and whether it was on a screen or on paper. Printed problems are usually size problems, and the app will tell you which size would have worked.
Questions we expect
Do other people need the app to read my code?
Not for an Open code — any camera reads it, because it is ordinary text in an ordinary QR code. Locked, Decoy, Split and Animated codes need Checkered Chat, because there is something to unlock, uncover or reassemble.
What is free and what costs?
Reading is always free. Scanning any code costs nothing, including a decoy somebody hands you, and so does writing an open or locked message and showing it on your screen.
Making decoys, split sets and animated sets, and printing sticker sheets, are the one-time unlock. Your first three codes in a paid mode are free — three in total, spent on whichever modes you like — so you can see what one is like before deciding.
Can a code somebody hands me do something to my phone?
Not one of ours. A Checkered Chat code carries text and nothing else — never a web address, never anything your phone could be talked into opening. That is a rule the app is built on rather than a setting you can turn off, and it is why a code from a stranger is safe to point a camera at.
This is worth knowing because it is not true of QR codes in general. Most codes on posters and menus are links, and a link can go anywhere. Ours are not links, so there is nowhere for one to take you.
How safe is a locked code?
It is a bit of fun, not a safe. Anyone holding the code can keep guessing the answer for as long as they like, and we would rather say so than let you find out later. Do not use it for anything whose disclosure would matter.
I scanned something and now I cannot find it.
That is the app working. Messages are not kept — there is no history and no inbox, and nothing to recover. If you need to keep something, save the code itself as a picture before you close it.
My printed stickers will not scan.
Almost always one of two things. Either the code is too dense for the size it was printed at — the app grades this before you print, and names the size that would work — or the sheet was printed with “fit to page” on, which shrinks everything and moves every label off the stock. Print at 100%.
The labels are slightly out of line with my sheet.
Printers drift. The sticker sheet screen can print an alignment check — outlines only — which you hold against a real sheet, and then nudge the layout in half-millimeter steps until they sit on the labels.
I paid, and a feature is locked again.
Open About and tap Restore purchases. That asks the App Store what your Apple Account owns. If it still says nothing, check that you are signed in with the account you bought it on.
Can I get a refund?
Yes, but not from us — Apple handles every App Store purchase and refund, and we never see the transaction. Go to reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in, and pick the purchase. If something about the app is the reason, we would like to hear it either way.
What age is this for?
The listing is rated 18+, which is higher than anything in the app would produce on its own. There is nothing objectionable in it: the rating describes who the app is for rather than what is inside it. A message only one person can read is a fine thing between adults and a poor thing to hand around a school, and we would rather say so in the place people check. Please do not use it to make somebody's life harder.