Binary Translator

How to translate text to binary

Choose Text → binary.
Type your text. Each character's bytes appear as groups of eight 0s and 1s.
Copy the result.

To decode, choose Binary → text and paste binary groups separated by spaces.

How it works

Computers store text as numbers. This tool uses UTF-8, the encoding used by almost every website and app:

Character	Byte value	Binary
A	65	01000001
a	97	01100001
0	48	00110000
space	32	00100000

Basic English letters, numbers and punctuation take one byte each. Accented letters such as é take two bytes, most other alphabets take two or three, and emoji take four. That's why some characters turn into several groups of eight digits.

Reading binary by hand

Each binary digit has a value, doubling from right to left: 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1. Add up the values where there's a 1:

01000001 = 64 + 1 = 65, which is the letter A.

The number base converter does this for any number and also shows hexadecimal, which programmers often use as a shorter way to write bytes.

Tips for decoding

Separate bytes with spaces. Groups can be shorter than eight digits; leading zeros are optional.
If you see an error, look for characters other than 0 and 1, such as the letter O instead of zero.
Binary that represents something other than text, like part of an image, won't decode to readable characters.

For another classic code, try the Morse code translator. To encode text for use in data and URLs, use the Base64 encoder.

Translation happens in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

Frequently asked questions

How is text turned into binary?

Each character is first encoded as one or more bytes using UTF-8, then each byte is written as eight binary digits. The letter A is byte 65, which is 01000001 in binary.

Why do some characters use more than 8 digits?

Basic English letters fit in one byte, but accented letters, other alphabets and emoji need two to four bytes in UTF-8. Each byte appears as its own 8-digit group, so these characters produce several groups.

How should I enter binary to decode it?

Separate each byte with a space, like 01001000 01101001. Groups can be shorter than 8 digits. If the tool shows an error, check for characters other than 0 and 1.