Binary Translator
Type text to see it as binary, or paste 0s and 1s to read the message. Works with any language and emoji through UTF-8.
Eight switches make a letter
A byte is eight bits, and each bit is worth double the one to its right: 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1. Flip the switches and add up the values that are on. The total is a character code.
64 + 1 = 65 → A
Notice that lowercase letters are exactly 32 more than uppercase: “A” is 01000001 and “a” is 01100001. Only one bit differs, which is why early programmers could change case with a single operation.
How binary to text translation works
Decoding runs the same steps backwards. The translator splits your binary into 8-bit bytes, converts each from base 2 to a number, and reads those numbers as UTF-8. For plain English, UTF-8 and ASCII give identical results; the ASCII table lists all 128 codes.
If you get an error, the most likely cause is a byte with seven or nine digits (a typo), or binary that was never text at all — for example, a number. To convert a single binary number to decimal, use binary to decimal instead.
Questions people ask
How do you convert text to binary?
Each character is first turned into a number using a character encoding (ASCII for English letters, UTF-8 for everything else). That number is then written in base 2, padded to 8 bits. “A” is 65, which is 01000001.
What does 01001000 01101001 mean?
It spells “Hi”. 01001000 is 72, the ASCII code for H, and 01101001 is 105, the code for i.
Why do emoji and accented letters produce more than 8 bits?
This translator uses UTF-8, where characters outside basic ASCII take 2 to 4 bytes. “é” becomes 11000011 10101001 and most emoji take four bytes. The leading 1s of each byte tell a decoder how many bytes belong together.
Do I need spaces between the bytes?
No. If there are no spaces, the binary is split into groups of eight from the left. Spaces just make it easier to read and let the decoder catch a byte that is missing a bit.
What is binary code?
Binary code is any system that represents information with two symbols, usually 0 and 1. Computers use it because a transistor is either on or off. Text, images and sound are all stored as long runs of these bits.