About the Text to Binary
Computers store text as bytes; this tool shows each byte as an 8-bit group, padded with leading zeros. The letter A (code 65) is 01000001 and a is 01100001 — they differ in a single bit, which is why flipping bit 5 toggles ASCII case.
Text is encoded as UTF-8 first, so non-ASCII characters produce several bytes. ☕ becomes 11100010 10011000 10010101: the leading 1110 marks the start of a three-byte sequence and each continuation byte starts with 10. This makes the tool useful for teaching and for checking how UTF-8 is structured.
Output groups can be separated by spaces (easiest to read), new lines (one byte per line) or nothing (a continuous bit string). The status line shows the byte and bit counts.
How to use it
- Type or paste text.
- Choose how to separate the 8-bit groups.
- Copy the binary output.
- Use ⇄ Swap to decode it back to text.
Frequently asked questions
Why is each character 8 digits long?
A byte has 8 bits. Every group is padded with leading zeros so bytes line up and can be decoded without separators.
Why does one emoji produce four groups?
Characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane take four bytes in UTF-8, so they produce 32 bits.
Is this the same as converting a number to binary?
No. This converts the characters' bytes. To convert the number 42 to binary use the decimal to binary converter.