Binary to Text Translator
Your data never leaves your browserPaste binary code to read it as text, or type text to get its binary. Works with UTF-8, emoji, hex and decimal bytes.
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How binary to text conversion works
Computers store every letter as a number, and they store every number as bits. Converting binary to text means running that backwards: split the bits into groups of 8, read each group as a number, then look up which character that number stands for. Take 01001000 01101001. The first byte is 64 + 8 = 72, which is H in ASCII. The second is 64 + 32 + 8 + 1 = 105, which is i. So the message reads “Hi”.
Plain English letters, digits and punctuation all fit in one byte, because they come from the original 128-character ASCII table. Anything else does not. Accented letters, Chinese characters and emoji are stored as UTF-8, which uses 2, 3 or 4 bytes per character. A simple binary translator that maps one byte to one letter turns those into garbage. This one decodes the bytes as UTF-8, so 11110000 10011111 10011010 10000000 comes out as a rocket emoji rather than four unrelated symbols. The character breakdown under the tool shows exactly which bytes belong to which character.
The alphabet in binary
Every uppercase letter starts with 010, every lowercase letter with 011, and every digit with 0011. The last five bits of a letter are its position in the alphabet, so A is 00001 and Z is 11010. A space is 00100000.
How to use
- Paste your binary into the input. Spaces, commas, line breaks and
0bprefixes between bytes are all fine, and so is one long unbroken run of bits. - The text appears on the right as you type. Copy it with the button in the panel header.
- To go the other way, switch to Text → Binary and type your text. Choose a space, a comma or no separator between bytes.
- Pick Hex or Decimal to decode or produce bytes in those forms instead, for example to turn hex into ASCII text.
- Use Swap to feed the result back in and check that it converts back to what you started with.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you convert binary to text by hand?
Split the binary into groups of 8 bits. For each group, add up the place values of the 1s, which are 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 and 1 from left to right. Then look the number up in an ASCII table. 01000001 is 64 + 1 = 65, which is A. Repeat for every byte and join the letters together.
What does 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 mean?
It spells "Hello". The bytes are 72, 101, 108, 108 and 111, which are the ASCII codes for H, e, l, l and o. Paste any binary message into the translator above to decode it the same way.
Why does each character use 8 bits?
A byte is 8 bits, and text is stored one byte at a time. ASCII only needs 7 bits for its 128 characters, which is why every ASCII byte starts with a 0. Some old systems and puzzles write text in 7-bit groups. If your binary has no spaces and its length divides by 7 but not 8, this tool reads it as 7-bit ASCII automatically.
How are emoji and accented letters written in binary?
With UTF-8, which uses more than one byte for anything outside ASCII. é is 2 bytes (11000011 10101001), most Chinese and Japanese characters are 3 bytes, and emoji are 4 bytes. The first bits of each byte say how many bytes the character spans, so a decoder knows where one character ends and the next begins.
What if my binary code has no spaces?
Paste it as one long string. The translator splits it into 8-bit bytes from the left, or into 7-bit groups when the length only divides by 7. If it divides by neither, a digit is missing or extra somewhere, and the error message tells you how many bits it counted.
Can it convert hex to ASCII text too?
Yes. Choose Hex as the byte format and paste hex such as 48 65 6C 6C 6F, 0x48 0x65 or \x48\x65. It decodes to Hello. Decimal byte values such as 72 101 108 work the same way.
Converting a single binary number to decimal or hex, rather than decoding text? Use the number base converter instead.
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