QR Date

QRDate.org screenshot

QR Date is a trusted timestamp that you can physically include in photos, videos and live streams using QR codes and audible data signals. It is for newsrooms, citizen journalists and social media users who wish to verify dates in videos, live streams and photos by visibly and/or audibly including trusted timestamps in the content.

QR Dates are included in photos and videos by holding a device or piece of paper showing the QR code to the camera, or by playing the data signal out loud while recording video or a live stream.

Upon release in 2022, QR Date was featured on the front page of Hacker News, and it has since had adoption within professional news journalism, including trials at The International Center of Photography. It continues to receive tens of thousands of unique users each month. The service is entirely free of use and has no advertising or user tracking.

The original idea and execution for QR Date was by me. Friends; Kris Slyka, Cendyne, Jan, and Cristian Vogel among a few others, helped me expand upon it to include instructional graphics, audible data signals and other considerations. The project is being promoted by Sonify Inc.

Tech stack

The project is written in TypeScript, with MT63 code written in C, running through a custom WASI API. As an open-source project, its hosting is generously sponsored by Vercel.

The QR Date specification is open and available freely for organisations to use.

Visit QRDate.org