Convert text to binary and binary to text
This text to binary converter turns any text into the ones and zeros a computer actually stores, and turns binary back into readable text. Besides binary it shows the same bytes as hexadecimal, octal or decimal values, and it can list character codes (the familiar ASCII numbers) or Unicode code points such as U+1F600.
Unlike simple ASCII-only translators, it encodes text as UTF-8, the encoding used by nearly every website, so accented letters, Hindi, Chinese and emoji are converted correctly — “é” becomes two bytes and “😀” becomes four. When decoding, it detects whether you pasted binary, hex or decimal and tells you what it found. Students learning how computers represent text, developers inspecting byte dumps and puzzle fans decoding binary messages will all find it handy.
How to use the Text to Binary Converter
- Choose “Text → code” to encode, or “Code → text” to decode.
- Pick a format: Binary (8-bit bytes), Hexadecimal, Octal, Decimal bytes, Character codes or Unicode code points. When decoding, “Auto-detect” works for most input.
- Type or paste into the left box; the result appears on the right as you type.
- When encoding, choose a separator (space, none, comma or new line) and optionally add 0b, 0x or 0o prefixes.
- Check the character table for each character’s code point and bytes, then copy or download the result. “Swap” sends the output back as new input.
Text to Binary Converter features
Real UTF-8
Text is encoded with the browser’s TextEncoder, so multi-byte characters and emoji produce the exact bytes a web page or file would contain.
Six output formats
Binary, hex, octal and decimal bytes, plus decimal character codes and U+ code points.
Auto-detect when decoding
Recognises binary (with or without spaces), hex with or without 0x, decimal codes and U+ notation, and shows what it detected.
Helpful errors
A binary string whose length is not a multiple of 8, an out-of-range byte or broken UTF-8 is reported in plain words.
Character table
See each character beside its code point, decimal value, UTF-8 bytes and binary — invisible characters such as spaces and zero-width joiners are named.
How text becomes binary
Every character has a number called its code point: “H” is 72, “i” is 105 and “€” is 8364. An encoding turns that number into bytes. In UTF-8, code points 0–127 (plain ASCII) take one byte, so “H” is stored as 72, which is 01001000 in binary or 48 in hex. Larger code points take two to four bytes with marker bits that tell the decoder how many bytes belong together.
Worked example: “Hi” → 72, 105 → 01001000 01101001. The euro sign, U+20AC, needs three bytes: 11100010 10000010 10101100 (E2 82 AC in hex). The grinning-face emoji, U+1F600, needs four: F0 9F 98 80.
| Code point range | UTF-8 bytes | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| U+0000 – U+007F | 1 | English letters, digits, punctuation |
| U+0080 – U+07FF | 2 | é, ñ, ü, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew |
| U+0800 – U+FFFF | 3 | €, ₹, Devanagari (हिन्दी), Chinese, Japanese |
| U+10000 – U+10FFFF | 4 | Emoji 😀, rare scripts, musical symbols |
ASCII codes, bytes and code points
ASCII defines 128 characters, numbered 0 to 127 — enough for English letters, digits and basic punctuation. For those characters the ASCII code, the Unicode code point and the single UTF-8 byte are all the same number, which is why “A” is 65 everywhere. Beyond ASCII the numbers differ: “é” has code point 233 but is stored as the two bytes 195 169 in UTF-8.
Choose “Character codes” when you want one number per character (what most people mean by ASCII codes), and “Decimal bytes” when you need the exact bytes on the wire, for example when comparing with a hex dump or a network capture. For converting single numbers between bases, use the number base converter; to package bytes as text for email or JSON, use the Base64 encoder.
Tips for decoding binary messages
- Each byte is 8 bits. If a message has 7-bit groups, it is old-style 7-bit ASCII — the converter accepts those groups too when they are separated by spaces.
- Without separators, binary is split into 8-bit chunks from the left, so a missing or extra digit shifts every following character.
- Digits-only input such as
48 69is ambiguous — it could be decimal or hex. Auto-detect assumes decimal; pick “Hexadecimal bytes” if you meant hex. - A � in the result means the bytes are not valid UTF-8, usually because a byte of a multi-byte character is missing.
Text to Binary Converter FAQ
How do I convert text to binary?
Choose “Text → code”, keep the format on “Binary (8-bit bytes)” and type your text. Each character is converted to its UTF-8 bytes and every byte is shown as 8 bits, for example “A” → 01000001. This text to binary converter updates the result as you type.
How do I convert binary to text?
Choose “Code → text” and paste the binary. Groups of 8 bits separated by spaces work best, but a continuous string whose length is a multiple of 8 is split automatically. The decoded text appears on the right.
What is “Hello” in binary?
01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111. In hex it is 48 65 6C 6C 6F, and in decimal ASCII codes 72 101 108 108 111.
Why does an emoji turn into 32 bits?
Emoji have code points above U+FFFF, and UTF-8 stores those in four bytes — 4 × 8 = 32 bits. Accented Latin letters use two bytes and most Asian scripts use three.
Is this the same as ASCII to binary?
For plain English text, yes: ASCII characters are one byte each in UTF-8 and produce identical binary. The difference only appears for characters outside ASCII, which pure ASCII converters cannot represent at all.
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. Encoding and decoding happen in your browser, and nothing you type is uploaded.