Switch the direction at the top, or press the swap button to turn the output back into input.
How text becomes binary
Computers store text as bytes. This converter uses UTF-8, the encoding used by almost every web page and app: plain English letters, digits and punctuation take one byte each, so H is 72, which is 01001000 in binary and 48 in hex. Accented letters take two bytes, many other scripts take three, and emoji take four. That is why the byte count can be higher than the character count.
Decoding codes into text
Paste binary with spaces, commas or line breaks between the bytes, or as one long run of ones and zeros: a run is split into 8-bit groups automatically. Hex can be written as 48 65, 4865, 0x48 0x65 or %48%65. Decimal codes need something between them, such as 72 101. If a character does not belong, or a group does not split into whole bytes, the message says exactly where, and if the codes look like another format it suggests switching.
When bytes are not valid text
Some byte sequences are not valid UTF-8, for example random numbers or text saved in an older encoding. They are still decoded, with the unreadable parts shown as the replacement character, and a note tells you so.
Private by design
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