QR labels

Cobblr prints QR labels for your items and locations. Scan a label later and it takes you straight to that thing in Cobblr, so a bin, a machine, or a shelf is one scan away from its record.

The loop:

1. On the Labels page, queue things from the Add labels panel: a tab per collection you can label (your own lists, machines, locations), each item with a one-tap Add.
2. Pick the target in the toolbar's selector: a saved printer, or System print (your computer's own print dialog).
3. Pick a size. Only sizes that fit the target are offered.
4. Print, then confirm with Mark printed once the output looks right.

Printing labels

• Switching targets never forgets a printer. Forgetting one is a separate, confirmed choice in the same menu. No printer yet? The toolbar prompts you to connect one, and System print still works, so a fresh workspace is never stuck.
• Each saved printer shows what it last reported: its loaded roll and, if it has one, its battery. Quick settings for a Bluetooth printer open from the same menu: name, how the print sits on the label (nudge it up or down if it prints too low), and how dark it burns. Label size is not among them. It comes only from the page's size picker, so it can never disagree with what prints.
• Sizes group into Label rolls and Sheets everywhere: a thermal or die-cut roll (4 × 6 inch, 50 × 30 mm) versus a full page (US Letter, an Avery layout). Common metric rolls are built in: a 50 × 30 mm roll is one pick, one-up or two-up, nothing to measure. For other stock, pick New label size, enter the media and label measurements in inches or millimeters (a toggle switches), and Cobblr works out how many fit.
• A reported roll is marked as loaded in the size picker. If your pick disagrees with what the printer reports, a one-click note switches you to the roll it says it has.
• Tile small labels on a 4 × 6 roll and cut them apart: 2 × 2 inch squares six at a time, 1½ inch squares eight at a time, several sizes in between, the cheap route if you already stock shipping labels.
• Every queued row shows what it is, the full URL its code will resolve to, and plus and minus buttons for copies. Click a row's name to rename it into a short caption that fits the label and keeps the QR large. One tap puts the full system name back.
• The preview is live: it always reflects your current QR settings (a changed label base URL updates it without re-queueing, because the address is baked in only at print), and a multi-sheet run previews as a strip of per-sheet thumbnails. Flip Actual size for true physical size on screen (drag the little ruler once to calibrate your display). The preview reads out how large each QR prints, turning amber then red when a code is too small for a phone to scan.
• Print hands the batch to your browser's print dialog right on the page, no new tab. Send to printer goes to a configured printer. Neither clears the queue until you confirm the output looks right (Mark printed in the browser flow, Mark batch printed on a network send), so a cancelled dialog, a jam, or a wrong size doesn't quietly burn the batch. A failed network send offers a reprint. Cobblr keeps a history of what you've printed.
• For a Bluetooth printer the button reads Print to your printer and sends the whole queue over one connection, asking for the device just once. It knows the result the moment the labels are out, so it clears on its own. If one didn't come out right, Return to queue puts those labels back (reusing their codes) so you can fix the size and try again.

The turn toggle, recents, and the Live box

For a wide label like a 50 × 30 mm roll, Cobblr turns the content a quarter turn by default, so the label reads upright, standing on its end. Turned, the name sits above the QR instead of beside it, giving it the label's full width rather than the strip left over next to the QR: on a 50 × 30 that is 30 mm of room instead of 20, the difference between a readable name and one wrapping to a few letters a line. A turn toggle beside the size pickers lets you decide for yourself, and the preview shows exactly how the label will sit. The stock itself is unchanged. The turn applies to the preview and to printing through your browser's dialog. A Bluetooth or network printer arranges each label from the dimensions configured on the printer itself (it already stacks the name above the QR when that face is taller than it is wide). To change what one of those prints, change the label size set up on the printer, not this toggle.

With no printer connected, printing through your own dialog, a printing on control lets you say whether you are on a roll or a sheet, narrowing the size list down to, say, that 50 × 30 roll. The pickers lead with what you print most (recently used sizes and printers sit at the top), and the Add labels panel remembers the tab you were last on, so a refresh leaves you where you were. Its Locations tab is the same areas-and-bins tree you navigate everywhere else.

If your printers connect through a bridge running on your computer, a Live box surfaces so you can watch them from any page: a pill at the bottom-right, or a row in the sidebar foot. It shows whether each printer is connected, idle, or printing, its loaded roll and battery, and buttons to connect, disconnect, or check what it has loaded. While a batch streams out, the printer icon carries a count of the labels still to print, the way a taskbar shows a job. The Live box is Cobblr's general live-activity surface (auto-print and other live modes use it too). With no bridge and nothing live running, it does not appear.

Before a big batch

The link inside a label is baked in at print time, and by default it carries the address you're using right now. Trying things out, or only ever printing a handful? Not a big deal, since reprinting a few labels is nothing. About to label a hundred bins? Read QR label URLs first and pick an address that will survive your setup changing: a few minutes setting it up now beats peeling and re-stickering every bin later.

Printing to a cheap thermal label printer over Bluetooth works a little differently, since those printers are not on your network at all. See Bluetooth label printers.

The code printed in the middle

Every label also carries a short code in the center of its QR, something like m1, p42 or b7. Scanning is still how you open a record. The code is for the human standing in front of the label: tell two identical bins apart at a glance, point at one across the room, or say "it's in b7" without either of you touching a phone.

• To type a code in (the sensible move on a desktop with no scanner), use the Codes button on the Labels page, not the main search box: search looks through your records' text and knows nothing about codes. Code lookup forgives case and the letters that get misread as digits (o and 0, l and 1).
• The Codes panel groups your code lists under their kind (Machines, Locations) by their real names. Every list you could label shows from the start with a suggested prefix, before you print anything: keep it, change it, or clear it to give that list no code at all (freeing its letter for another list). Save locks a suggestion in. Leave one alone and your first label just adopts it. You can also find an item by its code there, and ask Cobb to make any of these changes for you.
• The code-inside-the-QR toggle is per list, so your 3D Printers can show the code while your CNC hides it even though both are machines. Locations start with it off (a room's name already tells you which one it is). Parts and machines start on.
• A prefix locks the first time you print a label with it: a sticker already on a shelf carries that code, so its prefix can no longer change. The list's row then shows the locked prefix with a small lock instead of an edit box. Until then it stays freely editable.

How codes stay short and unique

A code is a prefix plus a number, and each list of things owns its own prefix and its own count. That keeps codes short while staying unique across the workspace, so m1 can only be one thing.

Scan to jump

Each label's QR is tied to one item or location. Scanning it opens that record, or runs an action on it. Stick a label on a bin and you never search for it again: scan, and you're there.

Filing by scanning

Location labels also drive putting things away. The scans funnel down the location tree: scan a room's label and you're working in that room, scan a container's label and the container is filed there and becomes where the session is aimed, then scan an item's barcode and it is captured already stamped with that container. The scanner itself never files anything, so nothing lands in your workspace until you confirm the session in the inbox, and when you do, each item arrives with its location already set. Label your rooms and bins once, and tidying is a series of scans plus one confirmation instead of a series of forms.

Labels from another tool

Already have QR labels printed by a previous system (Homebox, or anything else that printed URLs)? You don't have to reprint them.

1. Under Configuration → Scan rules (editing rules takes an admin), teach the scanner the foreign format once. The simplest rule takes the old system's base URL plus its path layout: declare the host once and map its path segments to kinds (/parts/ to Parts, /locations/ to Locations), and a label like old.host/parts/4 opens the item whose field holds that id. A URL prefix for a single kind, a regex, or a bare number also work.
2. Check it with the Test a payload box, which shows what any pasted value resolves to before you trust a rule.

Rules run in order, first match wins, and each has its own on and off switch. With no rules, nothing changes: an unmatched scan flows through the normal identify routine.

Labels pair naturally with locations (label your shelves and bins) and with inventory (label the parts themselves).