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QR scans of shared files: what we saw on 55 Link in Seconds QR links

Sunny 5 min read

#photos#pdfs#data#code#scan

1 in 6 file opens starts with a QR scan

poster.pdf Live
lisview.com/qr-data

This is what we saw on 55 QR links on Link in Seconds from 4 to 24 October 2026: 342 scans out of 2,058 viewing sessions, so about 1 in 6 opens came from a QR scan. 97% of scans came from phones, split about evenly between iPhone (51%) and Android (49%). Videos were the files people scanned most, and QR visitors read a little less and almost never downloaded. It is a small sample from one service over three weeks, so treat it as a field note, not market-wide QR statistics.

17%

Opens from a QR scan

Of 2,058 viewing sessions

51 / 49

iPhone / Android

Share of 332 phone scans

30%

Of video views

Came from a QR scan

Link in Seconds data, 55 QR links, 4 to 24 October 2026. Bots, staff and owners' own scans excluded; max 20 sessions per link.

How did people open a shared file?

Opened fromSessionsShare
The link itself (message, email, post)1,69382.3%
Scanning a QR code34216.6%
All viewing sessions, 4 to 24 October 2026. The remaining 1% opened inside an album, too few to report on their own.

Which files got scanned most?

The files that belong to a place or a moment: a video on a poster, a page at an event, a menu on a table. About 3 in 10 video views came from a QR scan, against about 1 in 11 PDF views.

File typeQR scansShare of views from a QR scan
Video18330%
Image5513%
HTML page4113%
PDF589%
Share of each file type's viewing sessions that started with a QR scan. Audio and ZIP had too few sessions to report.

Who scanned: iPhone or Android?

Both, in about equal numbers: 169 scans from iOS and 163 from Android. Those 332 phone scans are 97% of all 342; the rest were too few to report by device. So the file behind a QR code has to work on a small screen first.

Did QR visitors behave differently?

Came fromSessionsLinksMedian engaged timeDownloaded
A link1,71641511.3 s5.1%
A QR scan342559.9 s0.6%
Engagement by how the visitor arrived. "A link" includes the few album opens.

A little shorter, and almost no downloads. Someone who scanned a code is often standing somewhere, phone in hand, and wants the answer now. They look, and they leave.

How many scans did a code get?

55 links were opened by QR at least once, and the median one was scanned 3 times in three weeks. The 5 busiest links had 29% of all scans, even with each link capped at 20 sessions, so a handful of codes carry a lot of this data.

What this means if you print a QR code

  • Make the file phone-first. Almost every scan was on a phone.
  • Put the answer at the top. QR visitors stayed about 10 seconds.
  • Use a code you can update. A printed code lives for months; replace the file behind it instead of reprinting. See update a PDF without changing the link.
  • Count the scans. A QR code with its own scan count tells you whether the poster or the flyer worked.
How we measured. A Link in Seconds QR code opens the file's link with a scan marker, so a scan is counted separately from a click. Window: 4 to 24 October 2026 (UTC), the first three weeks this data was recorded. We started from 4,029 non-bot sessions and removed: bots and link previews, our own staff, the link owner's own opens and test scans (recognised by a hashed IP, so a few may slip through or be removed by mistake), links that are blocked or under review, and links of banned accounts. That left 2,833 sessions; we then counted only the first 20 sessions of each link, which left 2,058 sessions on 458 links, 342 of them QR scans on 55 links. Groups under 30 sessions are dropped, and only anonymised totals are published.

Source: Link in Seconds first-party data, 4 to 24 October 2026. You may quote these numbers with a link to this page.

Quick answers

What share of Link in Seconds file opens came from a QR scan?

About 17%. Across 2,058 viewing sessions of files shared with Link in Seconds from 4 to 24 October 2026, 342 (16.6%) came from a QR scan and 82.3% from the link itself. These scans came from only 55 links, so this is what we saw on one service, not a figure for QR codes in general.

Did people scan our QR codes more on iPhone or Android?

About evenly: of the 332 scans from phones, 51% came from iPhones (iOS) and 49% from Android. Phones made 97% of all scans.

Which files were opened by QR code the most?

Video: 30% of video views on Link in Seconds came from a QR scan, the highest of any file type. Images and HTML pages followed at 13% and PDFs at 9%.

Did QR visitors engage less than link visitors?

Slightly. People who scanned spent 9.9 seconds at the median against 11.3 seconds for people who clicked a link, and they almost never downloaded the file (0.6% vs 5.1%).

How many times was a typical QR code scanned?

In our data, 55 links were opened by QR at least once in three weeks, and the median one was scanned 3 times (counting at most 20 sessions per link). The 5 busiest links had 29% of all scans.

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