You may have come across a very large QR code when transferring a partially-signed (or signed) Bitcoin transaction (PSBT) and found that the camera struggles to capture the data from the QR. This guide will explain strategies to overcome the problem.
A large QR can happen due to there being many signatures contained in the data, eg for a multisig wallet, or if there are multiple inputs to the transaction. The QR is even larger if both of these are true.
For more education about partially signed Bitcoin transactions and transferring data by QR, here is some background reading. The guide references a Pi Zero, but since then, the superior ParmAirGap (airgapped laptop) version has been developed. You can get one here. In this guide, the program qrencode is used, which is installed on all ParmAirGaps since May 2026.
Option 1: Use a Phone
Depending on how private you want to be, and how much you trust/distrust your phone and its camera/photo apps, this may be a suitable option. This guide is not about deciding on that suitability, but practically how to do it if you choose. A phone dedicated to privacy is ideal (eg ParmaPhone, coming soon).
Sometimes taking a photo of the large QR with your phone or tablet and presenting that to the capturing computer’s camera might do the trick in capturing the data. You may be able to expand the photo for better resolution.
Another thing you can do is capture the data with your phone’s camera, not just take a photo. Different phones behave differently, but you may be able to just open the phone’s camera, point it at the QR, and try to detect it. If successful, a small popup may show. On iPhones, you may first have to tap the QR option in the camera app.
See the yellow popup in the example below; just tap it. In the demo, I’ve used a sentence, not a transaction.
Tapping the popup should take you to a notepad with the data shown. You’d then copy it and transfer it to the target computer (eg by email, or USB drive).
From the target computer, you can copy the text to the clipboard and then paste it in your Bitcoin wallet – find a function that imports a transaction by text. On Electrum Wallet, it looks like this…
Option 2: Splice the data
This is getting funky and very manual, but also satisfying.
SUMMARY: If the data is just too big, even for a phone camera to assist, you can copy the text of the transaction from your wallet, and break it up into small chunks manually, then produce a QR for each chunk, then transfer each chunk to the target computer via QR, then reconstruct the small chunks by pasting each sequentially into the target wallet (or a file first, then to the wallet).
To start, instead of exporting to a QR (which has failed you because it’s too big), export to text. This can be achieved in Electrum either by copying the text to the clipboard, or to a file, then getting the text from the file. Sparrow Wallet will have similar functionality.
Here is a random large transaction I found on the blockchain (not my wallet) …
Let’s make a QR code with with that transaction data above…
First, if you don’t have the program, qrencode, get it on Linux using the command:
sudo apt-get install qrencode
Then generate a QR with this command structure in the terminal …
qrencode -t utf8 "paste_the_transaction_data_between_these_quotes"
When I attempt that, I get an error that the data is too large. So now, to proceed, I will break the data into chunks…
Now I just copy the first chunk to the clipboard and use qrencode…
Now I do the same with the second chunk, and so on …
These QRs are manageable for my target computer, but if not for you, they can be made into smaller chunks. Each one can be captured and saved to a file, and joined back together as the original was.
If your target computer already has a QR capturing app, that’s great, but otherwise, Parmanode software has one in the tools menu (Linux only)…
If you opt for the “qri” option, you can do this…
The regular “qr” option opens the QR Scanner and pastes the captured text into the Parmanode window for you to copy. Then you just paste it into a file and continue with the next QR, joining the text all together (no image shown).
Finally, in the wallet app, load the large text transaction from the clipboard (or file)…
Option 3: Fully manual
You know that all of Bitcoin is text, right? So theoretically, you can look at the data with your eyes, and transcribe it by hand using a pencil, or type it into the target computer. Good luck not making a mistake, though. If you wanted to, you could even send it across the world by smoke signal, or Morse Code!