Binary to Text Converter
Byte by byte
| Character | Bytes | Binary | Hex | Decimal |
|---|
One character is not one byte
This is the thing that trips people up. In UTF-8 a plain Latin letter takes one byte, an accented letter usually two, most Devanagari characters three, and many emoji four. So "नमस्ते" is six characters but eighteen bytes, and converting it to binary produces eighteen groups of eight bits, not six.
Both counts are shown above for exactly this reason. Any code that assumes they are the same — truncating a string at a byte offset, sizing a database column in characters — will eventually cut a character in half.
The bases are the same data
- Binary — base 2, eight digits per byte. Shows every bit, which is why it is long.
- Hexadecimal — base 16, exactly two digits per byte. This is why memory dumps and colour codes use it.
- Decimal — base 10, 0 to 255 per byte.
- Octal — base 8, three digits. Now mostly seen in Unix file permissions.
Nothing is converted between them in any meaningful sense — they are four ways of writing down the same bytes.
Binary is not encryption
Writing something in binary hides nothing. It is reversible by anyone in seconds, including by this page. It is a representation, not a lock.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Because of UTF-8. A plain Latin letter is one byte, but an accented letter is usually two, most Devanagari characters are three, and many emoji are four. Anything that assumes one character equals one byte breaks the moment the text is not plain English, which is why the byte count and the character count are shown separately here.
Only how the same bytes are written. Binary is base 2 and shows every bit; hexadecimal is base 16, so each byte is exactly two digits, which is why it is what you see in memory dumps; decimal is base 10 and octal base 8. The underlying data is identical.
It helps but is not required going back to text — an unbroken run of binary is split into groups of eight from the left. If the total is not a multiple of eight the tool says so rather than guessing where the boundary is.
No. It is a way of writing the same data, not of hiding it, and anyone can convert it straight back. Anything relying on binary for secrecy is not secret.
A BOM is three bytes, EF BB BF, at the start of a UTF-8 file. It carries no visible character but it does change the byte count and can break parsers, so it is worth knowing when it is there.
No. It runs in your browser.