What Barcodehammer does

Scanning with the camera

You point the camera at a code and the app reads it. There is nothing to set and nothing to load: the recognition sits in the device itself. Thirteen formats are recognised, from the QR on a poster to the EAN on a carton of milk.

What the app shows after reading is the content and the format. Nothing more. For a code you scanned, the app says nothing about validity, and that is deliberate: the operating system's recognition only hands over codes whose check digit adds up, so a tick saying "valid" would be false reassurance.

At the top there is a button for the torch, handy for a code on paper in the dark, and you can set the camera to open straight away when you start the app.

The Open button

If a code you read holds something your device can handle, an Open button appears. A web address goes to the browser, a phone number to the dialler, and likewise an email address, a text message and a place on the map.

If there is more than one thing in it, you pick from a list that names the destination on every line. So you see where you are going before you tap. If there is nothing to open, the button is simply not there.

The app hands the address on and does not judge where it leads. See chapter 4 of the terms of use.

Creating codes in twenty formats

You pick a format, type the content, and the code is there. There is no create button: what you type appears as a code at once. Saving is a separate step, because otherwise every keystroke would leave a line in the history.

The formats sit in two lists that fold open: area codes (QR, Data Matrix, Aztec, PDF417) and bar codes (the other sixteen). Beside the chosen format is an i that says in plain language what kind of code it is and where you come across it.

Before it draws anything, the app looks at the length, the permitted characters and the capacity of the format, with its own message for each case. While you type, the app stays quiet about an entry that is only still too short; with a wrong character you hear about it at once. More about that on the Code formats page.

A logo in the middle of your QR code

A logo fits in the middle of a QR code. The app then raises the error recovery high enough for the code to stay readable. For free you pick an image from your gallery; with Pro it can come from a file as well, and an SVG or PDF logo then stays vector in the exported SVG or PDF.

A history you find your way back in

Everything you scan or create is added to the history, in cards you fold open and shut. Tap a row and the code is drawn again, with the content below it.

In that opened row you fill in a description and tags. If there is a description, it goes at the top of the row and the content of the code moves below it. So it does not disappear, because you have to be able to place a code. You type tags yourself; what you used before is listed underneath to tap.

Three buttons decide what you see. Group chooses what the cards stand for: scanned and created, code format, date or tag. Sort sets the order within a card: by moment, content or format, in both directions. The magnifying glass turns the title bar into a search bar, and searches the content, the name of the format, the description and the tags.

The whole history is stored encrypted on your device. How that works is on the Security page.

In the free version, history keeps up to 25 scanned and up to 25 self-made codes, independently of each other. Pro removes that limit.

The ticket vault Pro

Tickets sit apart from the rest, on a screen of their own, behind a lock that opens with your fingerprint, face, PIN or pattern. The vault closes again as soon as the app goes to the background or you tap the padlock yourself.

You can search the vault too, but the magnifying glass only appears once you have opened it. So searching never asks for your fingerprint of its own accord. Every ticket gets a description and tags of its own, just as in the history.

With Aztec, PDF417 and long opaque QR codes the app suggests keeping something as a ticket. A suggestion, never a silent filing.

Bulk scanning Pro

Here the camera does not stop at the first code. Every new code goes into a list and scanning the same code again adds one. If a count is wrong, you take one off with the One less button or throw the row away.

Just after a count, that same code is skipped for three seconds. Without that pause, one box left lying in view counts itself up, because the camera hands over a code four times a second.

The list goes out as an xlsx file, with five columns: content, format, count, first scanned and last scanned. Xlsx and not csv, for one reason: in a csv, Excel turns 007312 into the number 7312 and a long EAN into scientific notation. In an xlsx it is recorded per cell that the value is text.

Reading a PDF full of tickets Pro

Four tickets for the same festival, all in one PDF from the ticket seller. Share that file to Barcodehammer and the app draws page after page and searches every one of them. You get a single list with everything that was in it, with the page number beside each entry.

You save that list as a text file, share it as text, or put it in the ticket vault in one go. You type what the group is called; every ticket gets that name as a label and its page number as a description.

Sharing, saving and reading in

• Save as file. PNG, and with Pro also SVG and PDF. You point out yourself where the file goes, through the system picker. For free a PNG is 512 pixels wide, with Pro 2048.
• Share to another app. As an image or as text, from the create screen, after a scan and from an opened row.
• Read in from another app. Share an image to Barcodehammer and the app looks for a code in it. Share text and the create screen opens with that text already filled in.

Backup with a password of your own

Through the menu in the history you make one file with the history and the tickets in it, encrypted with a password you choose yourself. Restoring merges and skips what is already there; tickets go back into the vault.

Outside the app they are protected by that password and no longer by your fingerprint. If you lose the password, the file can no longer be opened, not even by the person who made the app.

Help you do not have to hunt for

Every screen has a question mark at the top right that takes you to the topic about that screen. The help itself is grouped into chapters, in the order in which you do things. Every topic starts with the short answer; the rest only comes when you ask for it.

You can search the help: type a word and you get the topics it appears in, with the sentence beside it. The same help is on this site, on the Manual page.

Settings

• Language: Dutch, English or Spanish.
• Theme: light, dark or whatever the device does.
• Text size, separate from the setting of the device.
• Full screen, which makes Android's bars disappear.
• Start scanning as soon as the app opens.
• A vibration when a code is recognised.