Binary Eye

Binary Eye is a barcode scanner by Markus Fisch, a developer in Germany, who has kept it going since 2017. Its README opens with a shrug, “Yet another barcode scanner for Android. As if there weren’t enough”, then the point: “This one is free, without any ads, and open source.” It reads codes with ZXing-C++, the C++ version of the well-known ZXing library. Version 1.75.6 came out in October 2026.

What it reads and creates

• Reads 21 formats, according to the README: QR Code, Micro QR and rMQR, Data Matrix, Aztec, PDF417, MaxiCode (partly), the EAN, UPC and RSS families, Code 39, 93 and 128, Codabar, ITF, Telepen and DX film-edge codes. It also reads inverted (light-on-dark) codes and works in portrait and landscape.
• Creates 11 formats, including QR Code, Data Matrix, Aztec, PDF417, EAN and Code 128.
• Bulk mode for scanning one code after another, and profiles for saving different settings.
• Shows what is inside: the raw content, a hex dump and details about the code, before you decide what to do with it (in the Advanced profile).

What it does with a code

From the 1.75.6 code, it recognises Wi-Fi network codes, contact cards, calendar events, email, text message and phone links, otpauth links for two-factor apps and FIDO links. Each gets a matching button: add the Wi-Fi network, open the contact or event in your contacts or calendar app, and so on. Anything else it offers to open or search for.

Links are cleaned by default: the setting that removes tracking parameters, such as utm_source, fbclid and gclid, is on from the start.

It also decodes the digital seals printed on some German official documents and checks their signatures against a list of certificates that comes inside the app, without going online.

What goes online

Binary Eye makes no internet requests of its own unless you set it up to. From the code and its privacy note (“Binary Eye does not collect any personal information.”):

• Sending scans to a web address of your choice is the only feature that uses the internet. It is off, with no address set, until you configure it. On Android 17 (API 37), version 1.75.6 asks for local-network access before the first in-app forwarding attempt or address test, whether the configured address is public or on your LAN; denying it still does not block public destinations.
• Forwarding scans to a Bluetooth device or through KDE Connect is also off by default.
• Opening and searching hands the link or text to your browser. The Simple profile searches Google for text that isn’t a link; you can change the search address in the settings.

There are no ads, analytics or crash reports, and our scan found no trackers.

The permissions it asks for

Twelve, several of them only for older Android versions: location and storage (for saving created codes) only up to Android 9, and the older Bluetooth permissions only up to Android 11; from Android 12, Bluetooth forwarding uses the newer “nearby devices” permission. The others are the camera, internet and the new local-network permission for testing and sending to an address you configure, vibration, Wi-Fi state and changes for adding networks, and one that the AndroidX library adds for internal use.

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s build of version 1.75.6, compiled from the source and signed with F-Droid’s key.
• The developer also attaches his own signed APK to each GitHub release. It has the same version code, 181, but a different key, so it and F-Droid’s file can’t update each other.
• Google Play has the same package name, with over 100,000 downloads. We can’t check the signing key Play uses, so we can’t say whether the Play version will install over this file.
• The 7.5 MB file runs on Android 5.0 and later, on ARM and x86, 32- and 64-bit. Our scan found no trackers.
• Binary Eye is licensed under the MIT licence. A country-code table inside the APK is an unchanged copy of a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 dataset (lukes/ISO-3166-Countries-with-Regional-Codes), which the app doesn’t credit.
• The screenshots come from the project’s F-Droid listing and were last updated in 2023.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).

Versions currently kept in the F-Droid repository. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.