Support

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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%.

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.

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.

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.

The listing is rated 4+, which is what the App Store's age questionnaire produces for it: there is nothing objectionable in the app, no accounts, no strangers and no content but your own. That is a statement about what is inside it, not a recommendation. A message only one person can read is a fine thing between friends and a poor thing to hand around a school, so: please do not use it to make somebody's life harder. That request does more work than a number would.