Text as bytes
Computers store text as numbers. This converter shows those numbers in binary (base 2), hexadecimal (base 16), octal (base 8) or decimal, one value per byte, and converts them back.
It uses UTF-8, the encoding of almost every web page and file today. Plain ASCII letters are one byte each (“H” = 01001000 = 0x48 = 72), while “é” takes two bytes and an emoji four. That’s why the binary for “é” is 11000011 10101001, not a single byte.
Decoding
Paste binary, hex, octal or decimal values separated by spaces, commas or new lines (prefixes like 0x and 0b are fine). A long unbroken string of bits or hex digits is split into bytes automatically. If the bytes don’t form valid UTF-8, you’ll see replacement characters (�).
Common uses: computer-science homework, debugging encoding problems, puzzles and escape rooms. For encoding binary files rather than text, Base64 is more compact.
Worked example
Here is what the Text to Binary Converter returns for its built-in example. Settings used: Direction: Text → code; Base: Binary; Separator: Space. Click Try an example in the tool above to load it, then change it as you like.
Hi! é01001000 01101001 00100001 00100000 11000011 10101001Questions
How do you write “hello” in binary?
01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 (one byte per letter in ASCII/UTF-8).
Why does one letter become two bytes?
Characters outside basic ASCII, such as é or €, take two to four bytes in UTF-8.
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