Binary Translator
Translate text to binary code and binary to text. Copy 8-bit groups of 0 and 1, with support for letters, numbers, symbols and emoji. Free, in your browser.
How it works
The text is converted to bytes in UTF-8, the standard encoding of the web, and every byte is written as eight binary digits. A basic letter, digit or sign takes one byte, so A is 01000001. Letters such as é or ł take two bytes, Cyrillic letters two, and most emoji four. To decode, paste groups of 0 and 1 separated by spaces, commas or line breaks. A group of up to eight digits is read as one byte, a longer group must be a multiple of eight digits and is cut into bytes. A group that is not valid binary becomes ?, and bytes that are not valid UTF-8 show as �.
Example: Hi becomes 01001000 01101001, and é becomes 11000011 10101001 (two bytes).
Frequently asked questions
How does text become binary?
Computers store every character as a number. The tool takes the number of each byte, such as 72 for H, and writes it in base 2 with eight digits: 01001000.
Why do some characters give more than eight digits?
Characters outside basic ASCII, such as é, ł, Cyrillic letters or emoji, take two to four bytes in UTF-8, so they show as 16, 24 or 32 digits.
How do I convert binary to text?
Choose Binary to text and paste your code. Use spaces, commas or line breaks between bytes, or paste one unbroken string of digits whose length is a multiple of eight.
What does a question mark in the result mean?
A group contained something other than 0 and 1, or had more than eight digits that did not divide into bytes. Check that group in your input.
Is my text sent to a server?
Your text is converted in your browser and is not sent anywhere.
More text tools
Binary here means the UTF-8 bytes of the text. Other encodings, such as UTF-16, give different digits.