Binary Translator

Type text to turn it into binary code, or paste 0s and 1s to read them as text. Each character becomes one or more groups of eight bits.

TextBinary

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How to use the binary translator

Type or paste your text. The binary appears as you type, in groups of eight separated by spaces.
Press Copy to paste it anywhere.
To read binary, press the arrows between the two labels and paste the 0s and 1s.

Binary alphabet

Capital letters in binary. Each lowercase letter has the same code with the third digit changed to 1, so A is 01000001 and a is 01100001.

A to G: A 01000001, B 01000010, C 01000011, D 01000100, E 01000101, F 01000110, G 01000111
H to N: H 01001000, I 01001001, J 01001010, K 01001011, L 01001100, M 01001101, N 01001110
O to U: O 01001111, P 01010000, Q 01010001, R 01010010, S 01010011, T 01010100, U 01010101
V to Z: V 01010110, W 01010111, X 01011000, Y 01011001, Z 01011010

The space between words is 00100000.

How to read binary by hand

Binary counts in powers of two. From right to left, the eight positions are worth 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128. Add up the positions that hold a 1.

Take 01001000. It has a 1 in the 64 position and a 1 in the 8 position, so it equals 72. In the ASCII table, 72 is capital H. The next group, 01101001, is 64 + 32 + 8 + 1 = 105, which is lowercase i. Together they spell Hi.

Binary, ASCII and UTF-8

Binary is just a way of writing numbers. To turn numbers into text, computers need an agreed table. ASCII, published in 1963, gave each English letter, digit and punctuation mark a number from 0 to 127. UTF-8 keeps those same codes for English and adds longer sequences for the characters of other languages and emoji, which is why it is the standard on the web today.

Binary as a secret code

Binary is not encryption: anyone with a translator can read it. It is still fun for puzzles, geeky gifts and messages to friends. If you found a code and are not sure it is binary, paste it into the cipher identifier. To hide a message properly from casual readers, try a keyword with the Vigenère cipher.

Frequently asked questions

How do I translate binary to text?

Press the arrows between the two labels to switch to binary, then paste the 0s and 1s. Spaces between groups are optional, but the total has to divide into groups of eight. Each group is one byte, and the bytes are read as UTF-8 text.

How do you say hello in binary?

Hello is 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111. Capital H is 01001000 and lowercase e is 01100101. Capital and lowercase letters have different codes.

How do you write I love you in binary?

I love you is 01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101. The space between words has a code too: 00100000.

Why does each letter have eight digits?

Computers store text in bytes, and a byte is eight bits. Eight bits can hold 256 different values, which is more than enough for English letters, numbers and punctuation. Leading zeros keep every group the same length.

Why is an emoji longer than a letter?

This translator uses UTF-8, which stores common English characters in one byte and other characters in two, three or four. An accented é takes two bytes and an emoji usually takes four.

Why does my binary say it is not valid?

Either the number of bits does not divide evenly by eight, or the bytes do not form valid UTF-8 text. Check for a missing digit, or for numbers that are not really text, such as an image or a plain number written in binary.

More translators and charts

Cipher IdentifierPaste a mystery code to find out what it is and decode it automatically.Braille TranslatorEnglish to braille cells and back, with capitals, numbers and the braille alphabet chart.Caesar Cipher DecoderEncode with any shift, or decode without the key: all 25 shifts, most likely first.