Binary to Text

How text is stored as binary

Computers store every character as a number, and numbers as groups of binary digits. In the common ASCII and UTF-8 encodings, one English letter takes one byte, which is eight binary digits. This tool converts binary to readable text and back.

Worked example

The binary group 01001000 equals 64 + 8 = 72 in decimal, and 72 is the code for capital H. The next groups 01101001 (105) and 00100001 (33) give i and an exclamation mark, so the three groups spell Hi!.

Tips for correct input

• Separate each byte with a space, and use only 0 and 1.
• Use groups of eight digits. Seven-digit groups can be padded with a leading zero.
• Characters outside basic English, such as accented letters or emoji, take two to four bytes in UTF-8.

Why it is useful

It helps students learn how data is represented and lets developers inspect encoded values.