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Text to Binary Converter

Turn words into ones and zeros: each byte of your text is shown as eight bits.

Processed locally in your browser

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The result will appear here.

What is Text to Binary Converter?

Computers store text as bytes, and each byte is eight binary digits. The letter "A" is byte 65, which is 01000001 in binary. Seeing the bits helps when learning how encodings work, solving classroom puzzles or checking a protocol.

This translator encodes your text as UTF-8 first, so ASCII characters give exactly one 8-bit group and accented letters or emoji give two to four. Choose to separate groups with a space (easy to read), a new line, or nothing at all.

How does it work?

  1. Type or paste text; the binary translation is instant.
  2. Pick the separator between 8-bit groups: space, nothing or new line.
  3. Copy the bits, or press Swap to translate binary back into text.

Common use cases

  • Learning or teaching how "Hello" is stored, bit by bit.
  • Creating the binary text for a puzzle, geocache or escape-room clue.
  • Checking the exact bits of a character before writing a bit-mask or parser.
  • Seeing how UTF-8 spreads é or 😀 across several bytes.

Examples

Try this input in the tool above:

Input
Hello
Output
01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111

Privacy

Text to Binary Converter runs entirely in your browser. The text or files you provide are processed on your device and are not uploaded, logged or stored on our servers.

Limitations

The bits shown are UTF-8 bytes. A different encoding such as UTF-16 would give different groups for non-ASCII characters.

Frequently asked questions

Why are there 16 or 32 bits for one character?

Only ASCII characters fit in one byte. UTF-8 uses two bytes for é, three for most CJK characters and four for emoji such as 😀.

Is this the same as converting a number to binary?

No. Here every character of text is translated. To convert a number such as 42 to base 2, use the Decimal to Binary tool.

How do I read the result?

Each group of 8 digits is one byte, read left to right with the most significant bit first: 01001000 is 72, the letter H.

More tools in Encoding & Decoding →