On my phone I use URLCheck (available in f-droid). You set it as your default browser app, but instead of opening a browser, it opens a popup where you can see the URL, and use some useful tools like removing tracking parameters or automatically rewriting x.com to xcancel.com. The rewritten URL can then just be forwarded to your actual browser (or whatever app is set up to handle that particular URL).
I still won't actually open random qr code URLs though, especially not ones from google.