You CAN Add The Official Ontario COVID-19 Vaccination QR Code To Apple Wallet Right Now… Here’s How
Yesterday, I posted this story on how to download your official Ontario COVID-19 Vaccination QR code to your Android or iOS device. In the case of the latter, you can store this on vaccine record on your iPhone in Apple Health. But you couldn’t store the QR code in Apple Health. In that report I said this:
When iOS 15.1 is released (likely in the next week or two), there will also be the ability to add the QR code to Apple Wallet for easier access.
Well, as seem to be a trend, a group of volunteers have fixed that. Because later that day I was directed to this website which allows you to create a QR code entry for Apple Wallet. The process is insanely easy as long as you have downloaded the PDF that you got from this website that has your QR code on it. Now if this group sounds familiar, they should. This was the same group who created an QR code generator with a verification system a few weeks ago. Their original project was retired and replaced with this effort. As a result, this will fill the gap until iOS 15.1 is released to the public. Now in case Android users are wondering why they can’t do the same thing, here’s what this group said:
We are awaiting Google Pay COVID Card API Access from Google at this time.
Google might want to get on that as I tested this out and it worked perfectly. By that I mean that I was able to get the QR code created and into both my Apple Watch and iPhone. I was then able to use the Verify Ontario app to verify that the QR code was authentic.
One final thing, this website generates QR codes for Apple Wallet for the following jurisdictions:
- Ontario
- British Columbia
- Québec, Alberta
- Nova Scotia
- Saskatchewan
- Yukon
- Northwest Territories
- California
- New York
- Louisiana
- New Jersey
- Hawaii
- Virginia
- Utah
Hopefully they support more places and Google gets on board with this as I am sure Android users could use this functionality.
UPDATE: @TheDanLevy sent this in via Twitter:
This is a pretty good hack to give you access to your vaccine QR code on your iOS device. In my case, I want it on all my devices. As in both my Apple Watch and iPhone as often travel with just the Apple Watch. Thus the method that my story refers to is of more value to me.
As for the comment about using a random third party site, that’s a fair point and one worth speaking about. The site has a FAQ which says this:
The thing is, you don’t put something like this in there unless you are actually doing what it says. And more importantly, you’re expecting to be called on it by say the Privacy Commissioner Of Ontario. Thus I have some degree of confidence in this site, but everyone must weigh their own level of comfort and risk and choose the option that matches that.
UPDATE #2: iOS 15.1 is out and you can add your vaccination record to wallet without using this method. You can find the details here.
October 25, 2021 at 2:14 pm
[…] Ontario moved to having a Vaccine Passport based around QR codes, I wrote about an unofficial way of getting them onto your iPhone via a third party service. Some people had misgivings about using a third party service and I can understand that. So that […]