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Text ↔ Binary

Convert text to 8-bit binary and back.

Free to use, no sign-up required. Text ↔ Binary is one of 198 tools built into Xenition, alongside a chat that can use them for you.

Converts text into strings of 0s and 1s and turns binary back into readable text. It is mainly used for learning how characters are stored and for binary-coded messages.

How to use Text ↔ Binary

1. Choose Text → Binary or Binary → Text.
2. Type your text, or paste binary groups separated by spaces, such as 01001000 01101001.
3. Read the converted result below the box.

How it works

Encoding turns the text into UTF-8 bytes and writes each byte as exactly 8 binary digits, with a space between bytes. Plain English letters take one byte, accented letters two, and emoji four. Decoding splits on whitespace, reads each group of up to 8 digits as one byte, and reads the bytes back as UTF-8. A group with anything other than 0 or 1, or longer than 8 digits, shows an error, and so do bytes that do not form valid UTF-8 text.

Example

“Hi!” encodes to 01001000 01101001 00100001, and 01001000 01101001 decodes to “Hi”. € becomes three bytes: 11100010 10000010 10101100.

Questions about Text ↔ Binary

Why does one character give several groups?

Each group is one byte, and UTF-8 needs more than one byte for anything beyond basic ASCII. é is 11000011 10101001, and 😀 is 11110000 10011111 10011000 10000000.

Why do I get “not valid UTF-8 text” when decoding?

The groups are valid binary, but the bytes do not form a complete character, for example the first byte of é on its own. Check that no group is missing and that none was cut off.

Use it from chat

You do not have to open Text ↔ Binary to use it. Ask Xenition in plain language and it runs the right tool, then carries the answer into whatever you are working on — a document, a spreadsheet, a deck.

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• Count Occurrences — Count how many times a word or phrase appears.
• Find & Replace — Replace text or regex matches across a block of text.
• HTML Entities — Encode or decode HTML special characters.
• Initials Extractor — Get the initials from a full name.