About barcodrod.io

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Hi, I’m Mark. By day, I work as a Senior PM Architect at Microsoft, working with technologies such as Microsoft Fabric, Power Platform, Copilot, Microsoft Intune, PowerShell, and Microsoft Graph.

Outside of work, I am a developer hobbyist, PC gamer, "dad" to two sweet cats (Gabbo and Diddy Kong), comic book fan, home automation tinkerer, and husband.

A few years ago, I was at work when I received an email containing a QR code I needed to scan. Straightforward, except I needed the decoded contents on my PC, not on my phone.

That left me with two options:

• Pull out my phone, scan the QR code, then send the result back to my PC.
• Save the QR code image and upload it to a random third‑party website to decode it.

Both worked. Neither was great.

The first option was slow and annoying. The second required trusting an unknown service with data I hadn’t vetted.

At the time, I was a heavy PowerShell user and had been looking for a practical excuse to learn Python. This felt like a good opportunity to solve a real problem while picking up a new scripting language.

After a few months of learning and experimenting, I released my first open‑source app: QRDecoder.

QRDecoder was a simple Windows tool that let you take a screenshot of a QR code (using the Windows Snipping Tool) and immediately view its contents. No phone and no third‑party websites required.

QRDecoder is no longer updated or under active development, but the app and source code can be found remains available on GitHub. It can be forked, referenced, and repurposed as needed under the MIT license.

After shipping several QRDecoder updates, it became clear that Python was not a great fit for this kind of application.

Python works great as a scripting language, but it was not well suited for my use case: building and distributing a Windows‑native, UI‑driven desktop application. There’s no built‑in Windows UI framework, and packaging Python apps as a Windows client app for distribution seemed fragile. It was possible and it worked but was prone to problems during the multi-step build process. 

At a high-level, the process came down to wrapping a python script (and required libraries) as an executable, and then using tooling to convert the exe to an MSIX app. Each layer of conversion added more potential for incompatibilities, performance issues, or unintended behaviors.

Why didn't I just use the executable? Why did it need to be an MSIX app? The Microsoft Store automatically signs MSIX apps with a trusted developer certificate during the app verification process. Meaning that if I wanted to publish the app to the Microsoft Store without absorbing the cost of a developer certificate, it needed to be an MSIX. MSIX was a non-negotiable for a free, frictionless distribution path.

Those factors led to a rewrite of QRDecoder in C# and .NET, with the goal of delivering a fully Windows‑native experience for users and for me as the developer.

Once the rewrite started, it stopped making sense to do a strict 1:1 port. If I was rebuilding from scratch, I might as well expand the scope:

• It should read more barcode formats than just QR codes.
• It should have the ability to generate barcodes and QR codes, not just decode them.
• It should have multiple options and tools for creating and decoding codes.

Since the app was no longer QR‑only, the QRDecoded name didn't fit anymore. I wanted something memorable, slightly odd, and available as a domain name. 

After about 15 minutes of brainstorming, I landed on barcodrod.io (pronounced “barcode rodeo” 🤠).

Disclaimer: For good reason, I am not a marketing, branding, or web design expert.

 barcodrod.io was released on the Microsoft Store in December of 2022, and I have been actively supporting and adding new features since. Since then, it's been installed on thousands of PCs, and is now used daily by people all over the world daily, spanning across 40+ different countries.

I hope you find barcodrod.io useful! If you run into any issues, want to suggest a feature, or discuss the app, feel free to visit the official barcodrod.io GitHub repository or send me an email.

Thanks for checking out my project 🙂

- Mark