Binary Translator
Free to use. Runs in your browser: your files and text are not uploaded.
Turn text into the ones and zeros a computer stores, or turn binary back into readable text.
How to use it
- Choose the direction: text to binary, or binary to text.
- Type or paste into the box.
- Press Copy to copy the result.
When converting binary to text, the digits must come in groups of eight. Spaces between groups are optional.
How it works
Computers store everything as bits, each one a 0 or a 1. Eight bits make a byte, which can hold a number from 0 to 255. Text is stored by giving every character a number.
For English letters, digits and common punctuation, those numbers come from the ASCII table. Capital A is 65, small a is 97, and a space is 32.
To write 65 in binary, add up powers of two: 64 + 1 = 65, so the bits for 64 and 1 are switched on.
| 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
So “A” is 01000001, and “Hi” is 01001000 01101001.
Limits
- The tool uses UTF-8. Binary made with a different encoding, such as UTF-16, will not read back correctly.
- Binary that is not a whole number of bytes, or contains anything other than 0, 1 and spaces, is rejected.
- This translates text. To convert a number such as 10 into binary 1010, you need a number-base converter.
Frequently asked questions
How do I read binary as text?
Split the binary into groups of eight digits. Each group is one byte, a number from 0 to 255. Look up each number in the ASCII table: 01000001 is 65, which is the letter A.
What is Hello in binary?
01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111. That is one byte for each of the five letters.
Why do some characters take more than eight digits?
English letters take one byte each. Accented letters, other scripts and emojis take two to four bytes in UTF-8, the encoding used on the web.