Text to Binary Converter

Translate text to binary and back.

About the Text to Binary Converter

Converts text into its binary representation and decodes binary digits back into readable text. Characters are encoded as UTF-8 bytes first and each byte becomes eight bits, so accented letters, CJK characters, and emoji survive the round trip instead of collapsing into a single byte. Decoding accepts binary pasted with spaces, line breaks, or no separators at all. Nothing is uploaded.

How to use the Text to Binary Converter

  1. Type or paste your text into the input panel, or press Sample to load an example.
  2. Press Text → Binary to encode it, or Binary → Text to decode binary digits back into characters.
  3. Choose a Format: a space between bytes, no separator at all, or one byte per line.
  4. Use Copy to take the result, or Download to save it as a .txt file.

Frequently asked questions

How is text converted to binary?
Each character is encoded to UTF-8 bytes, then every byte is written as eight binary digits, most significant bit first. The letter H is byte 72, which is 01001000.
Why does one character sometimes produce more than 8 bits?
Because UTF-8 is variable width. ASCII characters are one byte, so 8 bits. An accented letter like é is two bytes (16 bits) and an emoji is usually four bytes (32 bits). Treating those as a single byte is what corrupts text in other converters.
Do I have to put spaces between the bytes when decoding?
No. Spaces, line breaks, commas, dots, dashes, underscores, and pipes are all ignored. The only requirement is that the total number of 0s and 1s is a multiple of eight.
Why does my binary fail to decode?
Two reasons are reported separately. Either the input contains a character that is not a 0 or a 1, and the position is given, or the bit count is not a multiple of eight, which means bits were dropped. A third case is a bit pattern that is not legal UTF-8, such as a lone continuation byte.
Is this the same as ASCII to binary?
For plain English text, yes: UTF-8 is byte-for-byte identical to ASCII for the first 128 characters. The difference only shows up once the text contains something outside that range.

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