Automatic zoom is coming to a barcode scanner near you
It’s no secret that scanning a QR code can be pretty annoying on mobile devices. Android tries to make the feature accessible with Quick Settings shortcuts and scanning built into the camera, but the codes themselves are often too small and require either zooming in or getting closer. Luckily, Google has been working on some updates to make scanning QR codes much faster.
In a recent series of tweets, Mishaal Rahman brought attention to Google’s intriguing updates to Android’s barcode scanning capabilities. The company has reportedly integrated an auto-zoom feature into ML Kit’s Barcode Scanning API and its own Code Scanner API. With this change, you’ll no longer need to manually zoom in to capture distant QR codes.
Rahman also pointed out the distinctions between the Google Code Scanner API and the ML Kit Barcode Scanning API. With the Google Code Scanner API, applications can scan barcodes without requiring a custom UI or camera interface. ML Kit Barcode Scanning API, on the other hand, is designed for more intricate use cases that require custom user interfaces. To suit different integration preferences, it is available in both bundled and unbundled versions. In either case, developers must implement the API in their apps before users can access these features.
This means that third-party apps calling on either API will soon be able to zoom into distant QR codes automatically. Additionally, since the built-in QR scanner on Android 13 and above uses the ML Kit Barcode Scanning API, it’s possible this functionality could also be extended to QR scanning in the camera app.
Rahman shared a tweet with a video showing how it can be used on a regular Android camera. From the recording, it looks like the camera sees a QR code in the distance and automatically zooms in to align with it. This would be a minor change, but the convenience it adds would certainly be welcome.
