Sometimes I can’t find a solution to a problem.
For this particular problem, I tried searching for an answer online and with ChatGPT, but I still couldn’t find a way to do this.
Let’s say you are watching a YouTube video on your phone and there’s a product placement with a QR code to go to a webpage with a 15% discount. Great. I want!
Okay. Now take out your phone and… wait. I am seeing the QR code on my phone. How do I scan the QR code? Hmm… mirror? Nope, I can’t see the code from my camera app. One solution is to have someone else can take a picture of it, then my phone can scan their image of the QR code. But if you don’t have any convenient way to do something like that you are out of luck. But are you?
You can open a QR code from an image for devices that support this function. Let’s say you have a QR code in an image, your phone might have a text extraction button that will be able to read text characters, but also can read QR codes. So all you need to do is take a screenshot. Simple. This works with the Samsung Galaxy phones. Alternatively, if you have a newer Samsung phone, you can hold the “Home” button and it will bring up the Galaxy AI search, where you can search by image, but also it will interpret the QR codes immediately.
However, depending on the streaming app, this might not work as some apps protect against taking screenshots. It will either tell you that screenshots are not allowed, or it will give you a blank image. In such a case, I have not figured out any workaround. I also tried these methods fail to produce an image file: Screenshot of Samsung Picture-In-Picture, or if the program itself will put itself into a hovering window, the screenshot will have that video portion showing a black area.
YouTube does work with screenshots or Galaxy AI search. Also, non-live content seems to work with apps like CTV, Global, Sportsnet, Xfinity. However, if the content is live, the screenshot will be blank.
Maybe you might know a solution that I might not know of? Let me know.