Binary Translator
Type text to get binary code, or paste 0s and 1s to read them as text. Each character becomes one or more 8-bit bytes in UTF-8, the encoding web pages use. You can paste the bits spaced out or in one long run.
About Binary Translator
A binary translator turns letters into the 0s and 1s a computer stores. Each 0 or 1 is a bit. Eight bits make a byte, and one byte can hold 256 different values. Plain English letters, digits and punctuation each fit in one byte, so "Hi" becomes two groups: 01001000 01101001.
Decoding works the same way in reverse. Paste binary and the tool reads it eight bits at a time. Spaced input (01001000 01101001) and one long run (0100100001101001) both work, and so do commas or dashes between bytes. Short groups such as 1001000 are read as plain numbers, so 1001000 still gives H.
How to read binary by hand
Each place in a byte has a value. From left to right the values are 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 and 1. Add up the values that sit under a 1. For 01001000 that is 64 + 8 = 72. In the ASCII table, 72 is a capital H.
Now try 01101001: 64 + 32 + 8 + 1 = 105, which is a small i. Put the two bytes side by side and 01001000 01101001 spells Hi.
A capital letter and its small letter differ by one bit. A is 01000001 (65) and a is 01100001 (97). Only the bit worth 32 changes. That is why "Hi" and "hi" give different binary even though they mean the same thing.
Words and phrases in binary
I love you → 01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 Hello → 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 ABC → 01000001 01000010 01000011 abc → 01100001 01100010 01100011 the digit 1 → 00110001 one space → 00100000
The digit 1 is not 00000001. Digits are characters too, and ASCII puts 0 to 9 at codes 48 to 57. The space between two words also gets its own byte: 00100000, which is 32.
Accents and emoji take more than one byte
ASCII only has 128 characters. Letters like é and ñ, Chinese and Arabic script, and emoji are stored with UTF-8, which uses two to four bytes for each of them. This translator uses UTF-8, so é becomes 11000011 10101001 and 😀 becomes 11110000 10011111 10011000 10000000.
The first bits of each byte tell you how the character is built. A byte that starts with 0 is a plain ASCII character on its own. A start of 110 opens a two-byte character, 1110 a three-byte one and 11110 a four-byte one. Bytes that start with 10 carry on the character before them. Every ASCII byte stays the same in UTF-8, so plain English looks identical either way.
Questions people ask
What is "I love you" in binary?▼
01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101. That is ten bytes: eight letters plus the two spaces.
How do I convert binary to text?▼
Split the bits into groups of eight. Add up the place values (128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1) under each 1 to get a number, then look that number up in an ASCII table. Or paste the binary into the box above and switch to Binary → Text.
Why is each letter eight digits long?▼
Computers store text in bytes, and a byte is eight bits. Plain ASCII needs only seven bits, so English letters always start with a 0 in their byte.
Is binary code the same as Morse code?▼
No. Both use two symbols, but binary gives every character the same eight-bit length. Morse code uses one to five dots and dashes per letter or digit and relies on pauses to separate them.
Can binary show letters from other languages?▼
Yes. With UTF-8 any character can be written in binary. Letters outside basic English take two to four bytes instead of one.