Text Record

What Is an NDEF Text Record?

An NDEF text recordtext recordNDEF record for human-readable text with language codeView full → (TNF 0x01, Well-Known Type "T") stores human-readable text content along with a language code identifier. While URI records are more common for action-triggering tags, text records are essential for informational tags, multilingual smart posters, and application-specific text data.

Payload Format

[Status Byte: 1 byte] [Language Code: N bytes] [Text: remaining bytes]

Status Byte: | Bit | Description | |-----|-------------| | 7 | UTF flag: 0 = UTF-8, 1 = UTF-16 | | 6 | Reserved (must be 0) | | 5-0 | Language code length (0-63) |

Language Code: IANA language tag ("en", "fr", "ja", "ko").

Text Content: Encoded in UTF-8 or UTF-16 as indicated by the status byte.

Encoding Example

Storing "Hello" in English: status byte 0x02 (UTF-8, lang length 2) + "en" (2 bytes) + "Hello" (5 bytes) = 8 bytes total payload.

UTF-8 vs UTF-16

UTF-8 is recommended for most applications — 1 byte per ASCII character. UTF-16 is preferable only when text is predominantly CJK characters, where it is more efficient.

Multilingual Tags

Multiple text records with different language codes in a single NDEF message:

Record 1: "Hello, World!" (lang: "en")
Record 2: "Bonjour le monde!" (lang: "fr")

However, not all phones handle multilingual selection gracefully. For reliable multilingual experiences, consider URI records pointing to a language-aware web page.

Use Cases

• Product information: Museum exhibits, retail products display descriptive text when tapped.
• Smart posterSmart posterCompound NDEF recordNDEF recordSingle data element with TNF, type, ID, and payloadView full → combining URI with title and action metadataView full → titles: Human-readable title within Smart Poster records.
• Configuration data: IoT devices read text records with configuration strings.
• Debug and diagnostics: Development tags with firmware version strings.

Limitations

Text records are plain text only (no HTML or formatting), do not trigger automatic actions (unlike URI records), and consume user memory quickly when multilingual (NTAG 213 has only 144 bytes).