Binary ↔ Text Converter
How Computers Store Text in Binary
Every character on your screen is stored in a computer's memory as a binary number. The most fundamental standard is ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), which assigns each character a number from 0–127, represented as 7 or 8 binary bits.
ASCII Binary Examples
| Character | ASCII (decimal) | Binary (8-bit) | Hex |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 65 | 01000001 | 41 |
| a | 97 | 01100001 | 61 |
| 0 | 48 | 00110000 | 30 |
| Space | 32 | 00100000 | 20 |
| ! | 33 | 00100001 | 21 |
Beyond ASCII – Unicode and UTF-8
Modern text uses Unicode (UTF-8), which can represent over 1 million characters across all world languages. A standard ASCII character still uses 1 byte (8 bits) in UTF-8, but characters like ñ, 中, or emoji use 2–4 bytes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are binary groups 8 bits long?
8 bits = 1 byte. A byte can represent 256 different values (0–255), sufficient to cover all ASCII characters plus many extended characters. Most modern computing is byte-oriented, making 8-bit groupings a natural standard.
What is the difference between binary and hex?
Both represent the same data in different number bases. Binary (base 2) uses only 0 and 1. Hexadecimal (base 16) uses 0–9 and A–F. One hex digit represents exactly 4 binary bits, making hex a compact shorthand for binary values.
Can this tool handle Unicode characters?
This tool converts characters using their JavaScript character codes (UTF-16). For ASCII characters (0–127), the binary output is 8 bits per character. Extended Unicode characters will produce values above 255 and may require multi-byte encoding.