Binary translator
Type in either box. Text turns into 8-bit binary, and binary code turns back into readable text, as you type. Emoji and accents work too.
How binary becomes text
Computers store every letter as a number, and every number as a row of bits. Reading binary is the same process run backwards: cut the bits into bytes, turn each byte into a number, and look the number up in a character table.
Walk one character through the four stages below. Try “A”, then “é”, then the emoji, and watch the byte count grow.
You see a character. The computer can't store shapes, only numbers, so first it looks the character up in Unicode.
Read a byte by hand
Each position in a byte is worth double the one to its right: 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1. Flip the switches to build a number and see which ASCII character it stands for. Uppercase letters live between 65 and 90; add 32 (flip the third switch from the left) and you get the lowercase letter.
64 + 8 = 72 · hex 48 · octal 110 · ASCII H
Seeing the value change as you flip each bit is usually what makes place value click. That same click can happen elsewhere: ahaboo builds hands-on explainers you can manipulate, like dragging the Moon to understand why it goes through phases.
Binary, ASCII and UTF-8 in one paragraph
ASCII (1963) defines 128 characters, numbered 0 to 127: English letters, digits, punctuation and control codes. Unicode extends the numbering to more than a million code points so every script and emoji has one. UTF-8 is the way those code points are written as bytes: ASCII characters stay one byte, everything else uses two to four. That's why this translator can read old ASCII binary and modern emoji binary with the same rules. The full list of 128 codes is in the ASCII table, and the letters alone are in the binary alphabet.
Questions people ask
How do I translate binary to text?
Split the binary into groups of 8 bits (one byte each), convert every byte to its decimal value, then look that value up in the ASCII or UTF-8 table. 01001000 is 72, which is “H”. Paste the bits into the Binary box above and the translator does all of this instantly.
What does 01001000 01101001 mean?
It spells “Hi”. 01001000 is 72 (H) and 01101001 is 105 (i).
Why does binary use 8 digits per letter?
Eight bits make one byte, the smallest unit most computers address. Plain ASCII only needs 7 bits (0–127), but it is stored in a full byte with a leading 0, which is why every English letter starts with 0.
Can the translator handle emoji and accented letters?
Yes. It uses UTF-8, the encoding used by about 98% of websites (W3Techs). Characters outside ASCII take 2 to 4 bytes, so “é” becomes 11000011 10101001 and “🙂” becomes four bytes.
My binary has no spaces. Will it still work?
Yes. A continuous string of 0s and 1s is split into 8-bit bytes automatically (or 7-bit groups if the length only divides by 7). If the length is not a multiple of 8 you will get a message pointing at the problem.
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. The conversion is JavaScript running in your browser tab. Nothing is uploaded.