Convert text to binary or hex and back

How it works

1. 1

   Choose whether you are turning text into bytes or bytes into text.

2. 2

   Pick Binary or Hex.

3. 3

   Type or paste your text or bytes; the result updates as you type.

4. 4

   Copy the output.

About the Text to Binary/Hex

Computers store text as bytes, and seeing those bytes helps when you are debugging encodings, solving a puzzle or teaching how characters are stored. This converter turns text into 8-bit binary groups or two-digit hexadecimal bytes, and turns either form back into text. It works from the UTF-8 bytes of your text, so a single accented letter or emoji may show up as two to four bytes.

What you can do

• Encode text into space-separated 8-bit binary bytes, or into hex bytes such as 48 65 6c 6c 6f.
• Decode binary or hex back into text, as you type.
• Switch between Binary and Hex at any time, and Swap the output into the input to reverse the direction.
• Get a specific error message when a group is not 8 bits, is not a valid hex pair, or the bytes are not valid UTF-8.

When it works best

• Solving a puzzle or CTF challenge that hides a message in ones and zeros.
• Checking exactly which bytes a string contains when an API rejects it.
• Showing students how ASCII and multi-byte UTF-8 characters are stored.

Things to know

• The conversion runs entirely in your browser.
• When decoding, bytes must be separated by spaces or line breaks. A long unbroken run of digits is read as a single group and rejected.
• Only UTF-8 is supported; text in other encodings such as Latin-1 will not decode correctly.
• To see code points rather than bytes, use the Unicode Character Inspector. To convert a single number between bases, use the Number Base Converter.

Frequently asked questions