App teams and anyone printing a download prompt
How to send iPhone and Android users to different app stores from one QR code
Printing two codes labelled iOS and Android asks the reader to identify their own device before they can act. Most will not bother, and the ones who do will occasionally pick wrong.
One code can decide for them. The routing happens when the code is scanned, so the same artwork works for every device and for whatever comes after the current two.
- 1
Create a link with a web fallback as the default
Start with the destination that should work for everybody — usually your product page. Anything that does not match a more specific rule lands here, so nothing ever dead-ends.
- 2
Add an iOS destination
Your App Store listing. This fires for iPhone and iPad, and also for macOS, which is deliberate — a Mac user is closer to the Apple ecosystem than to Google Play.
- 3
Add an Android destination
Your Google Play listing. Between the two rules and the default, every scanner is covered.
- 4
Optionally deep link into the app itself
If the app is already installed, a custom scheme can open it directly at the right screen, with the store listing as the fallback when it is not.
- 5
Print it and check the split later
Scan analytics record operating system per scan, so you can see the real iOS-to-Android mix of the people standing in front of your poster — which is often not the market share you assumed.
What this will not do
- Rules are evaluated in order and the first match wins. If a country or time rule sits above the OS rules, it takes precedence — worth knowing when the routing does something you did not expect.
- Detection is from the browser's user agent. It is reliable for iOS and Android in practice, but it is an inference, not a certainty.
- There is no language or region-of-city routing. Country is the finest location grain available.
Tools used in this guide
Questions
What happens on a desktop browser?
Can I add this to a code I already printed?
In what order are the rules applied?
Does the QR code look different?
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