HACKER Q&A
📣 andrewfromx

Where are the QR codes to swap contact info?


Does anyone know of an app trying to solve this problem:

You want to give your phone number to someone you just met. The humans have to exchange the digits by talking or typing. One phone should display a QR the other phone scans and the phone number gets inserted into contacts just like that.

i.e. the QR should have all the info of a VCard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard

I've googled around and found stuff like:

https://flexibits.com/cardhop

https://www.scanbizcards.com/

but it should be much easier. In iOS the wallet app should have several vCards of your self. You want to give someone your main cell number + name + email that's one wallet item. You want to give someone just your google voice number + name and no email that's another.

And built into iOS and Android should be if the camera scans these it knows to auto insert into contacts. We use QR's for everything else! Why are we still printing business cards to be scanned or giving out a 10 digit number by speaking?

  👤 ClapperHeid Accepted Answer ✓
Isn't this built in to either iOS or Android [or was in the past]? I'm pretty sure there was some way of exchanging contact info via Bluetooth or BLE, involving tapping phones together.

Or am I misremembering? I've never used the feature myself [if it exists outside of my fevered imagination]

EDIT: Just checked on my Android phone. In the contacts app, I can bring up someone's contact info > click Details icon > then Share > choose VCF or text > and then, choose Bluetooth as the sharing option and send it to another device. Yes, it's a bit of a faff, but it is there and is built-in.

👤 Someone
As a workaround on iOS, you could make multiple contacts for yourself with varying amounts of metadata, pick one to share from the contacts app and share it using AirDrop (only works if the recipient also has a Apple device, of course)

Alternatively, use a QR code generator to generate codes containing whatever you want to share and store them somewhere on your device such as in a note taking app.

👤 readonthegoapp
QRs never really worked for me -- either b/c i'm android, or because my phone is too slow, or they just suck.

we used to have bump.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niJguU7r-bs

but, i say do it. esp if you laid off like everyone else. might not lead to fortune and fame, but possibly something else might come of it.

👤 sophiabits
In New Zealand (probably other countries as well?) businesses put up QR codes during covid which citizens would scan in order to track where they'd been for contact tracing. Hard to imagine a world where my grandma knows how to scan a QR code--but here we are.

If you're thinking of starting an app like this, I think it's a decent time for it.

👤 yuppie_scum
Communicating your 10 digit phone number by voice can be done in what, 5 seconds?
👤 yuppie_scum
Also there’s airdrop