Checkered Chat

Write a note. Turn it into a QR code. Stick it on something. Checkered Chat makes QR codes out of your own words. There is no account, no inbox and no server — the code is the message. Print it on a sticker, hold up your screen, drop it into a conversation, or tape it to a lunchbox. TWO NOTES, ONE CODE Decoy mode puts two notes in the same code: a short plain one and a longer one underneath. An ordinary camera shows the plain note. Checkered Chat shows both. It is the party trick of the app — the birthday card that scans as "Happy birthday" for the whole table and as something better for the person it is for. LOCK IT WITH A RIDDLE "What did we have for breakfast?" Whoever knows the answer opens it. Capitals and punctuation don't matter, because nobody remembers their own punctuation. Or use a passphrase, taken exactly as typed. SPLIT IT ACROSS SEVERAL CODES Choose the arithmetic and hand the pieces out: any three of five open the note, any two open nothing. Good for treasure hunts, group gifts, and anything worth assembling. PLAY A LONG ONE AS A SEQUENCE A note too long for one code becomes a set of frames the other phone catches in any order, with a ring that fills as they arrive. WRITE ONE IN MESSAGES The iMessage app is a whole composer, not a share button: write it in the drawer and it goes straight into the conversation. Anyone who has Checkered Chat taps it and reads it, no camera involved. Everyone else sees a code they can point a camera at. SHOW ONE ON YOUR WATCH Send a code from your phone to your wrist, or write a short one there with dictation. Pin the ones you use often, and a widget in the Smart Stack or on your watch face opens straight into them. PRINT IT PROPERLY Sticker sheets measured from the manufacturers' own published templates, exported as vector PDFs so a two-inch sticker is two inches. An alignment page and half-millimeter nudges for printers that drift. Module shapes, color and frames, with a meter that tells you whether it will still scan before you spend a sheet finding out. CLEAR THE SCREEN Show a code for five seconds and it clears itself. Turn the phone face-down and it is gone. Nothing is kept unless you ask for it to be. Every code carries text and only text. Nothing in a Checkered Chat code is a link, so one handed to you by a stranger has nowhere to take you. Nothing is uploaded, because there is nowhere to upload it to. A lock here is a party game, not a safe. Anyone holding the code can keep guessing for as long as they like, and we would rather say so now than let you find out later. It is for notes worth finding: a card, a clue, something you would rather hand over than send. Free: reading any code, writing open and locked ones, and showing them. One payment — no subscription — unlocks two-note codes, split sets, animated sets, shapes and frames, and sticker sheets. The first three codes you make in any of those are on the house.