01BinaryTools Workbench Alphabet How to read Examples

Binary Code Translator01001000 01101001

Convert text ⇄ binary code. Switching views keeps your input, the encoding is always stated, and your data never leaves the browser.

INPUT

Waiting Paste something and the type is detected automatically

0 characters

Encoding & format (expand as needed)

Text encoding Grouping Separator

Paste tolerance: line breaks, commas and 0x prefixes are ignored; the output header always states the exact settings used.

TRY AN EXAMPLE

Text encoding vs number bases — two different things. The text "42" is two characters and encodes to 00110100 00110010 in ASCII/UTF-8 (a "4" glyph and a "2" glyph). The number 42 is a value, written 101010 in binary. The tool detects which one you mean; the Bases view converts numbers, the Binary view converts text.

ONE INPUT, THREE OUTPUTS — THE SAME "Hi" (01001000 01101001)

QR code

Scanning returns exactly the chosen string — Hi with "Original text" selected, or the 0/1 characters with "Binary characters" selected. It encodes what you pick and never converts silently.

Open in the tool → Image · QR

Dot matrix

Black = 1, white = 0, read row by row, plus three corner markers so the grid can be located again. QR scanners cannot read it — bring it back with Read dot matrix….

Open in the tool → Image · Dot matrix

Signal tone

An FSK-modulated tone (ggwave, about 4.3 s) you can play and download as WAV — then restore into the input box with Read WAV…. Microphone receiving is planned, not in this version.

Open in the tool → Sound

How to read binary code →Decode "Hi" step by step, plus what to do when bits are missing or the encoding doesn't match. Binary code alphabet →A–Z, a–z, 0–9 and symbols with ASCII values and 8-bit binary. Click a row to copy; convert your own name. Verified examples →Hi, Hello, I love you, Happy birthday, a Chinese character, and the number 42 vs the text "42".

How to read binary code, step by step

Reading binary text means undoing an encoding: the bits were produced by taking each character, turning it into a number, and writing that number in base 2. You reverse that in three steps.

The complete example: decode 01001000 01101001

Step	What you do	Result
1. Group into 8-bit bytes	Split the bits into blocks of eight	01001000 \| 01101001
2. Get each byte's value	Read each byte as a base-2 number (place values 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1)	01001000 = 72 · 01101001 = 105
3. Map values to characters	Look the values up in the ASCII table	72 = H · 105 = i
Result	Hi

Worked arithmetic for step 2: 01001000 → 0×128 + 1×64 + 0×32 + 0×16 + 1×8 + 0×4 + 0×2 + 0×1 = 72.

Decode it yourself in the tool

01001000 01101001

Input type: binary · encoding: UTF-8 · grouped in 8-bit bytes

Open in the converter → Text view See it as bytes →

Binary numbers vs encoded text — don't mix them up

The bit string 101010 and the text encoding of "42" are different things:

The number 42 is a value. In base 2 it is 101010, in base 16 it is 2A. No character encoding involved.
The text "42" is two characters. Each character gets a byte: "4" → 00110100, "2" → 00110010, so the text is 00110100 00110010.

If someone hands you bits and says "decode this", they almost always mean encoded text (8 bits per character). If they say "what's this number in binary", they mean the value. Our converter detects which case your input is and states its interpretation in the result header — you can override it with the type selector.

ASCII and UTF-8: how they relate

ASCII defines 128 characters (values 0–127) and fits in 7 bits; files store one character per byte, so a leading 0 is added (H = 72 = 01001000). UTF-8 keeps every ASCII character at exactly the same byte value — English text looks identical in ASCII and UTF-8 — and uses 2–4 bytes per character for other scripts. For example the Chinese character 好 is 11100101 10100101 10111101 (3 bytes). That's why "each character is 8 bits" is only true for ASCII-range characters.

When decoding goes wrong — and what to do

1. Illegal characters in the bits

01001x00 contains an x. Nothing but 0, 1 and separators belongs in a bit string. Fix: remove or correct the character and check the source again — don't delete the position, replace it with the correct bit.

2. Incomplete length — bits don't divide by 8

01001000 0110100 has 15 bits. 15 is not a multiple of 8, so the byte boundaries cannot line up and any "decoding" is meaningless. What the remainder tells you: only that the length is wrong — e.g. 19 bits leaves remainder 3, so you are missing or have 3 extra bits somewhere. It cannot tell you which line lost them; you have to compare against the source, line by line. Our converter refuses to decode in this case, reports the remainder, and flags lines whose length differs from the majority.

Common mistake: "remainder 2, so line 2 lost 2 bits." No — the remainder says nothing about the location. A length check is a detector, not a locator.

3. Encoding mismatch

Some messages use 7-bit ASCII (7 bits per character, no leading zero). Decoded as 8-bit, the boundaries land in the wrong places and you get garbage or a "not valid UTF-8" error. Fix: if the total bit count divides evenly by 7 but not by 8, try the 7-bit ASCII option (the converter offers it in the error message). Multi-byte UTF-8 that starts mid-character fails the same way — realign to the start of the message.

Practice with verified examples → · Look up characters in the alphabet table →

Binary code alphabet — A–Z, 0–9 and symbols in 8-bit binary

This table shows how ASCII characters are written in binary. Each character maps to a decimal ASCII value from 0–127, and that value is written with 8 bits (padded with leading zeros). Click any row to copy its 8-bit binary code.

Scope note: this is the ASCII representation. UTF-8 uses these same single-byte values for A–Z, a–z, digits and symbols, but other writing systems (e.g. Chinese) take multiple bytes — not every piece of text is a sequence of 8-bit ASCII codes. See How to read binary code for details.

The full table

Character	Decimal (ASCII)	Binary (8-bit)	Hex
A	65	01000001	41
B	66	01000010	42
C	67	01000011	43
D	68	01000100	44
E	69	01000101	45
F	70	01000110	46
G	71	01000111	47
H	72	01001000	48
I	73	01001001	49
J	74	01001010	4A
K	75	01001011	4B
L	76	01001100	4C
M	77	01001101	4D
N	78	01001110	4E
O	79	01001111	4F
P	80	01010000	50
Q	81	01010001	51
R	82	01010010	52
S	83	01010011	53
T	84	01010100	54
U	85	01010101	55
V	86	01010110	56
W	87	01010111	57
X	88	01011000	58
Y	89	01011001	59
Z	90	01011010	5A
a	97	01100001	61
b	98	01100010	62
c	99	01100011	63
d	100	01100100	64
e	101	01100101	65
f	102	01100110	66
g	103	01100111	67
h	104	01101000	68
i	105	01101001	69
j	106	01101010	6A
k	107	01101011	6B
l	108	01101100	6C
m	109	01101101	6D
n	110	01101110	6E
o	111	01101111	6F
p	112	01110000	70
q	113	01110001	71
r	114	01110010	72
s	115	01110011	73
t	116	01110100	74
u	117	01110101	75
v	118	01110110	76
w	119	01110111	77
x	120	01111000	78
y	121	01111001	79
z	122	01111010	7A
0	48	00110000	30
1	49	00110001	31
2	50	00110010	32
3	51	00110011	33
4	52	00110100	34
5	53	00110101	35
6	54	00110110	36
7	55	00110111	37
8	56	00111000	38
9	57	00111001	39
space	32	00100000	20
!	33	00100001	21
?	63	00111111	3F
.	46	00101110	2E
,	44	00101100	2C
-	45	00101101	2D
:	58	00111010	3A
;	59	00111011	3B
'	39	00100111	27
"	34	00100010	22
(	40	00101000	28
)	41	00101001	29
+	43	00101011	2B
/	47	00101111	2F
=	61	00111101	3D
<	60	00111100	3C
>	62	00111110	3E
@	64	01000000	40
#	35	00100011	23
$	36	00100100	24
%	37	00100101	25
&	38	00100110	26
*	42	00101010	2A

Tip: a row is highlighted on hover — click it to copy the 8-bit binary code.

How to convert your own name

Take the name ANN and look up each letter:

A → ASCII 65 → 01000001
N → ASCII 78 → 01001110
N → ASCII 78 → 01001110

So ANN = 01000001 01001110 01001110 in 8-bit ASCII (3 bytes).

Try it with your own name

Type any text — the binary below is computed live in your browser with UTF-8, the same encoding the tool uses.

Open "ANN" in the converter →

Where the values come from

ASCII assigns 65–90 to A–Z, 97–122 to a–z and 48–57 to 0–9. The lowercase letters are exactly 32 more than uppercase (A=65, a=97), which flips one specific bit — that's why a is 01100001 while A is 01000001.

Next: how to read a whole binary string →

Binary code examples you can verify

Every example below states the exact input, its type and encoding, and the correct result. Each was computed with standard UTF-8 encoding — not just by this site's own code — and every card opens the converter with that exact input and view preloaded.

One idea worth keeping: the number 42 and the text "42" are different inputs with different encodings. Both examples are below so you can compare them side by side.

Hi

01001000 01101001

2 bytes · UTF-8

Open in the converter → BinaryDecoded text view

Hello

01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111

5 bytes · UTF-8

Open in the converter → BinaryDecoded text view

I love you

01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101

10 bytes · UTF-8

Open in the converter → BinaryDecoded text view QR code →QR of the bits →Dot matrix →Signal tone →

Happy birthday

01001000 01100001 01110000 01110000 01111001 00100000 01100010 01101001 01110010 01110100 01101000 01100100 01100001 01111001

14 bytes · UTF-8

Open in the converter → BinaryDecoded text view Signal tone →

好

11100101 10100101 10111101

1 Chinese character · 3 bytes in UTF-8 (not 8-bit ASCII)

Open in the converter → BinaryDecoded text view

42

101010

The number 42 as a value (bases view): binary 101010 · hex 2A · octal 52

Open in the converter → Bases

"42"

00110100 00110010

The text "42" — two characters, 2 bytes. Compare with the number above: same input meaning, different encoding.

Open in the converter → BinaryDecoded text view

Check them yourself

For any English text you can verify by hand with the alphabet table: look up each character's value and write it as 8 bits. For characters beyond ASCII (like 好) the UTF-8 encoding takes multiple bytes — the tool states the byte count in its result header so you can tell at a glance which case you're in. See How to read binary code for the full method.

What does a QR code contain?

A QR code encodes exactly the string you choose: encode Hi and scanning returns Hi; encode the binary characters 01001000 01101001 and scanning returns that string, which the receiver then decodes once more. In the Image view you pick between the two explicitly — the tool never converts silently.

Can signal tones be restored? What about dot matrices?

Signal tones use FSK modulation (ggwave, MIT license): the downloaded WAV can be restored to text with this tool's “Read WAV”. Live microphone receiving is planned and not in this version.

A dot matrix encodes the current bit string row by row with black = 1, white = 0. Matrices generated by this tool can be read back; QR scanners cannot read them, and restoring arbitrary images is not supported.

FAQ

Is my data uploaded? No. All conversion happens locally in your browser; QR codes, dot matrices and signal tones are generated on your device.

Why does it say “bits cannot be divided by 8”? The bit string is missing or has extra bits; decoding it anyway would only produce garbage. Check it against the source — this tool never pads silently.

Which bases are supported? Decimal, binary, octal and hexadecimal, with arbitrary precision and negative numbers (the view switches automatically based on the input type).