Binary to Text Translator, Free and Private
Translate binary code back into readable text in your browser. Accepts spaces, commas, 0b prefixes or unbroken runs of bits, and names the first bad group. Nothing is uploaded.
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About translating binary to text
This page translates binary code into readable text, in your browser. Binary messages turn up in puzzles, classroom exercises, games, social media posts and the occasional debugging session, and reading them by hand is slow. Paste the ones and zeros and the text appears on the right at once. The translator is forgiving about how the bits are written, and it tells you exactly which group it could not read. Nothing is uploaded, and your text never leaves your device.
How to translate binary to text
Steps
- Codes to text and Binary are pre-selected on this page. Paste the binary into the input.
- Groups may be separated by spaces, commas or line breaks, carry a
0bprefix, or run together with no separators at all. An unbroken run is cut into groups of eight bits. - Read the text on the right and press Copy.
- To go the other way, press Swap or switch Direction to Text to codes, and type the text you want in binary.
Privacy
Everything happens in your browser. Your text is never uploaded to our servers and nothing is kept once the tab closes.
How binary becomes text
Eight bits make a byte
Each group of eight binary digits is one byte with a value from 0 to 255. Text is stored as a sequence of such bytes, and the translator reads them as UTF-8, the encoding used by the web and by modern software. 01001000 is 72, which is the letter H.
Short groups
Many puzzles drop the leading zeros, writing 1001000 for H. The translator pads groups shorter than eight bits, so both forms work. Groups longer than eight bits are reported as errors, because they cannot be a single byte.
Accents and emoji
Letters outside the English alphabet take two bytes in UTF-8 and most emoji take four, so a single character may be two or four binary groups. If the groups form bytes that are not valid UTF-8, the translator says so instead of showing garbage.
Checking your own binary
Type any text in Text to codes mode and the translator shows the binary with a space between bytes. Change the Separator to None for a continuous string or Newline for one byte per line. Swap moves the result into the input so you can confirm it reads back correctly.
Common uses
- Solving a binary puzzle or decoding a hidden message.
- Learning how letters are stored as bits.
- Checking a byte sequence seen in a debugger or a hex and binary dump.
- Writing a short message in binary for a card, a poster or a game.
Related tools
The full Text to Binary converter also handles hex and decimal ASCII codes, and Text to Hex is the compact way to read bytes. The Base64 Decoder handles another common text encoding of bytes, and the Data Converter converts between bits, bytes and larger units.