Binary Translator

About the Binary Translator

This free binary translator works both ways. Type normal text on the left and the binary code appears on the right. Paste ones and zeros on the right, and the text appears on the left.

It reads binary with or without spaces, and it finds binary that was pasted into the wrong box. Switch to hex or decimal to see the same bytes another way.

Everything happens in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

Features

• Both directions, live as you type
• UTF-8 — accents (é, ñ), Chinese or Japanese characters and emoji turn into the right bytes and back
• Binary, hex or decimal — one byte = 8 bits, 2 hex digits or a number from 0 to 255
• With or without spaces between the bytes
• Finds binary in the text box and reads it, with an Undo button
• A byte-by-byte table for every character — great for learning
• Copy either side, or download the code as a .txt file

How text becomes binary

A computer stores every character as bytes, and a byte is 8 bits — 8 ones and zeros. This tool uses UTF-8, the encoding of almost every web page and file today:

• English letters, digits and common signs take 1 byte (the same as old ASCII)
• Accented letters like é and ñ take 2 bytes
• Most Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters take 3 bytes
• Emoji take 4 bytes

A capital letter and its small letter differ by one bit: A is 01000001 and a is 01100001.

Examples

• Hi → 01001000 01101001
• Hello → 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111
• Hello in hex → 48 65 6C 6C 6F, in decimal → 72 101 108 108 111
• I love you → 01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101

Reading binary you found somewhere

Binary is copied around in many forms. The tool reads all of these:

• Bytes with spaces: 01001000 01101001
• One long run of bits: 0100100001101001 — it is cut every 8 bits
• 7-bit groups from old ASCII tables: 1001000 1101001
• Bytes split by commas or line breaks
• Hex with 0x or \x in front, and decimal numbers from 0 to 255

When a group cannot be read, the status line says how many were skipped. Bytes that are not valid UTF-8 text show as �.

Frequently asked questions

How do I translate binary to text?

Paste the binary into the Binary box (or into the text box — the tool notices). The text appears at once. If you get strange symbols, the binary may be cut in the wrong place or may not be text at all.

What is "Hello" in binary?

01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 — one byte for each of the five letters.

Why does an emoji have 32 bits?

UTF-8 uses 1 to 4 bytes per character. An emoji needs 4 bytes, so it is 32 bits. Older tools that only know ASCII cannot write emoji at all.

What is the difference between binary, hex and decimal?

They are three ways to write the same byte. Binary uses 2 digits (0 and 1), hex uses 16 (0–9 and A–F), decimal uses the 10 normal digits. The byte for A is 01000001 in binary, 41 in hex and 65 in decimal.

Can it convert numbers to binary?

This tool turns text into binary, so the digit *5* becomes the byte for the character "5" (00110101). To turn the number 5 into binary (101), use the Number Base Converter.

Related tools

• Number Base Converter — numbers in binary, octal, decimal and hex
• Morse Code Translator — text to dots and dashes, with sound
• Braille Translator — text to braille dots and back
• Base64 Encode / Decode — another way to write bytes as text
• Hash Generator — MD5 and SHA fingerprints of a text

How to use it

• Type your text in the left box — the binary appears on the right
• Or paste binary (or hex, or decimal) in the right box to read it as text
• Choose Binary, Hex or Decimal, and tick or untick Space between bytes
• Look at the table to see each character byte by byte
• Press Copy under either box, or Download .txt to save the code