How text becomes binary
Computers store text as numbers. Each character is given a code — “A” is 65, “a” is 97, “!” is 33 — and those numbers are stored in binary, a base-2 system that uses only 0 and 1. One byte is 8 binary digits (bits), so “A” = 65 = 01000001.
| Character | Decimal | Binary | Hex |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 65 | 01000001 | 41 |
| a | 97 | 01100001 | 61 |
| 0 | 48 | 00110000 | 30 |
| space | 32 | 00100000 | 20 |
| ! | 33 | 00100001 | 21 |
ASCII and UTF-8
The first 128 codes come from ASCII, the 1960s standard for English letters, digits and punctuation. Modern computers use UTF-8, which keeps ASCII exactly the same but uses 2–4 bytes for other characters — accented letters, other alphabets and emoji. This translator uses UTF-8, so “é” becomes two bytes and an emoji becomes four.
How to read binary
Each position in a byte has a value, from left to right: 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1. Add up the positions that contain a 1. For 01001000: 64 + 8 = 72, which is “H”.
Hex, octal and decimal
Long binary strings are hard to read, so programmers often write bytes in hexadecimal (base 16, digits 0–9 and A–F): one hex pair equals one byte. Switch the tabs above to see the same text as hex, octal or decimal bytes. Pasting works in every mode, with bytes separated by spaces.
Want to encode files or text for email and URLs instead? Use Base64 encode/decode.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert text to binary?
Type your text in the left box. Each character is shown as one or more 8-bit bytes in the right box.
How do I convert binary to text?
Paste the binary into the right box, with spaces between each 8-digit byte.
What is “hello” in binary?
01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111.
Does it support emoji and other languages?
Yes. It uses UTF-8, so any character can be converted.