Code
Binary Code Translator
Binary is how computers store every letter you read. Each character becomes an 8-bit number, a string of ones and zeros, using the ASCII standard. This translator goes both ways: text to binary, and binary back to text.
01001000 01101001
It runs on your device, so you can paste sensitive notes without any of it touching a server. Type to encode, or paste 8-bit groups separated by spaces to decode.
How the Binary Code works
Each character has a number in the ASCII table. That number is written in base 2, using only 0 and 1, and padded to 8 digits (one byte). The letter H is 72, which is 01001000.
To decode, the reverse happens: each 8-digit group is read as a base-2 number and looked up as a character. This tool expects groups separated by spaces so the boundaries are clear.
Examples
Binary Code chart
Every letter at a glance. Use it to read or write by hand.
Which binary page do you need?
This page is the two-way tool and the reference chart. It is the right page when you want to understand binary rather than only run a conversion: how a letter becomes a number, how that number becomes eight bits, and why the answer is always a multiple of eight.
If you only need one direction, the dedicated pages go further on the specific problems that direction creates. Text to binary covers how characters outside plain English behave. Binary to text covers what to do when a paste will not decode, which is by far the more common frustration.
History and origins
The idea of representing information with two states goes back to Gottfried Leibniz in the 17th century, but binary became the language of machines with the digital computers of the 1940s. Two states, on and off, are trivial to build reliably in hardware, which is why every modern computer speaks it.
ASCII, the code that maps letters to numbers, was standardised in 1963 so that different machines could exchange text. The capital A you type is stored as the number 65, which in 8-bit binary is 01000001.
Frequently asked questions
What is 8-bit binary?
It means each character uses 8 binary digits, or one byte. Eight bits can represent 256 different values, which is enough to cover the standard ASCII character set with room to spare.
How do I convert binary back to text?
Paste your binary into the box with a space between each 8-digit group. The tool reads each group as a number and looks up the matching character automatically.
Does this handle emoji and accented letters?
The character to binary direction handles any character your keyboard produces. For plain ASCII letters and digits the output is clean 8-bit bytes, which is what most people want.
Learn more
Go deeper on the ideas behind this tool.
Not sure this is the right tool?
If you have a message and you are not certain what it is, the cipher identifier reads the character set and the letter statistics and tells you which scheme it most likely uses, and why. It covers every code and cipher on this site.