Sneaker-net’ing URLs to personal devices in the year 2024

Suppose you’re on a computer provisioned by a corporate IT department. They’ve restricted the software you can install. On principle, you’ve decided that even signing in to websites on a personal account is nice to avoid, where possible.

Given those constraints, how do you transfer interesting web stuff you’ve come across from the sphere of corporate IT into your sphere of IT? Normal tools like bookmarking sites or iCloud sharing are out. Emailing it to yourself is also out, too many steps and too janky.

What I came up with is:

  1. Find a bookmarklet that will convert the current location’s URL to a QR code. This Codepen worked for me, but I bet there are others!
  2. Hold my personal phone up to the monitor like a weird person and scan said code
  3. Now the location is on my phone and I can do as I like
Adam Keys @therealadam