If we can crown a single winner for the last two years, it’s the QR code. Once an inconvenience, the obnoxious little black and white squares have become indispensable and hygienic ways to access menus in these becovid times. With how much more we’re using them, it’s unsurprising that Google would be looking for ways to make that experience even simpler and more convenient, and it looks like that will happen with Android 13.

We don’t know how this will look or manifest just yet, but a trusted source has provided us with a handful of details from an Android 13 image, and included among them is an option to “Show QR Scanner” in the lock screen section of Settings. As both that name and its location would otherwise imply, the toggle claims to “allow access to the QR Scanner from the lock screen.”

Currently, to read a QR code in most versions of Android and Android skins you have to fire up the camera app, and either it will automatically recognize a code that it sees and prompt to open it, or you have to interact with some aspect of the camera’s UI to trigger a scan — though the latter is less common now. But according to this, Google will bring a QR scanner of some kind to the lock screen itself.

I don’t know this will just be an easier-accessed shortcut to a dedicated QR-recognizing camera mode (as with the current camera shortcut) or if it means you’ll be able to simply tap the power button and have your phone immediately be ready to recognize QR codes without any additional interaction. Though the latter would be pretty great, even just a button on the lock screen would be more intuitive for some people.

Relatedly, Android 13 will also add a QR code Quick Settings tile, which could be an indicator for how the lock screen feature will work — implying (based on how most non-binary-toggle-setting Quick Settings shortcuts work) that it opens a separate view/mode for the action.

In the last decade, QR codes have gone from an annoying detail on student theater posters and parts management inventory systems to a way to share details like Wi-Fi network information, join group chats, and the now-ubiquitous menus used by so many restaurants. Even Chrome OS can scan QR codes, so with our increasing reliance on them, it’s not too surprising that Google would try to make them even easier to use in Android 13.

This change, if it pans out, would join others that were recently spotted, including a tap-to-transfer feature for media playback and a new look for the output picker.