Binary to Text

Binary to Text Converter

Paste binary into the box and the text appears as you type, with no button to press. You can paste it in almost any layout: groups separated by spaces, commas or line breaks, with or without 0b prefixes, or one long string of 0s and 1s.

Under Text Encoding the tool detects the encoding automatically, or you can choose UTF-8, Latin-1 (Windows-1252) or UTF-16 yourself. Turn on Show each character to see a table with every character's binary, hex value and Unicode code point. Copy the result, or download it as a .txt file.

The conversion runs in your browser, so nothing you paste is sent to our server.

How binary becomes text

Binary is read in groups of 8 bits, called bytes. Each byte is a number from 0 to 255, and the encoding says which character that number stands for.

Take 01001000. Reading the bits from the right, each position is worth double the one before: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128. The 1s here sit in the 64 and 8 positions, so the byte is 72, which is the code for H. The next byte, 01101001, is 105, the code for i. So 01001000 01101001 reads "Hi".

English letters, digits and basic punctuation take one byte each. Other characters need more in UTF-8, the encoding almost all text uses today:

The first bits of each byte say how to read it:

• A byte starting with 0 is a character on its own.
• 110 starts a 2-byte character, 1110 a 3-byte one and 11110 a 4-byte one.
• 10 marks a continuation byte that belongs to the character before it.

Converters that turn every byte into a character separately get this wrong and produce garbage for anything beyond plain English. This one reads the bytes together, so accents, other alphabets and emoji come out correctly.

Choosing the encoding

Detect automatically gets it right most of the time, by picking the encoding the bytes actually fit. Choose one by hand when you know where the binary came from, or when the result looks off.

UTF-8 is used by almost all web pages, modern files and apps.

Latin-1 (Windows-1252) is common in older Western European text, old Windows files and legacy databases. Every character is a single byte, so é is just 11101001. Windows-1252 also fills some codes that plain Latin-1 left empty, such as the euro sign (10000000) and curly quotes.

UTF-16 uses two bytes for most characters. Windows and many programming languages use it internally. In the usual byte order, é is 00000000 11101001.

When the text looks wrong

• "é" instead of "é", or "€" instead of "€": the binary is UTF-8 but was read as Latin-1. Choose UTF-8.
• � symbols: the bytes aren't valid UTF-8. The text is probably Latin-1, so choose that.
• Empty boxes or gaps between every letter: the binary is probably UTF-16 read one byte at a time. Choose UTF-16.

Layouts that work

All of these read "Hi":

01001000 01101001
01001000,01101001
0b01001000 0b01101001
0100100001101001

Line breaks between groups work too. If you paste one long string without separators, its length has to be a multiple of 8. If it isn't, a digit has been lost or added somewhere.

When the input isn't valid

If something in the input isn't binary, the tool tells you exactly which character is wrong. The usual culprits are look-alikes that sneak in when binary is copied from an image, a PDF or text recognition: a capital O instead of zero, or a lowercase l or capital I instead of one. They look identical in many fonts.

What it's useful for

Puzzles and challenges. Binary messages turn up in escape rooms, geocaches, puzzle hunts and capture-the-flag security challenges.

Learning and homework. Convert by hand, then check your answer. The character table shows each step: binary, hex, code point and character.

Debugging. Logs, network captures and microcontroller serial output sometimes print raw bytes as bits. Paste them here to see whether they contain readable text.

FAQ

How many bits are in one character?

In UTF-8, 8 bits for basic English letters, digits and punctuation, and 16, 24 or 32 bits for everything else. In Latin-1 every character is 8 bits. In UTF-16 most characters are 16 bits and emoji are 32.

What's the difference between binary and hex?

They're two ways of writing the same bytes. Each hex digit stands for 4 bits, so a byte always fits in two hex digits: 01001000 is 48. Hex is just shorter to read and write.

Can I convert text back to binary?

Yes, with Text to Binary.

Is my data sent anywhere?

No. Everything runs in your browser, and we never see or store what you paste.