Binary to Text Converter
Note: Only ASCII maps one character to one byte. In UTF-8 an accented letter is two bytes and an emoji is four, so a binary string cut at the wrong boundary corrupts everything after the cut rather than losing a single character.
In ASCII every character is one byte and the mapping is simple. In UTF-8 — which is what almost everything actually uses — characters outside the basic Latin set take two, three or four bytes each. An emoji is four. That is why an accented letter converted as ASCII comes back as a question mark or garbage, and why splitting a UTF-8 binary string at the wrong byte boundary corrupts everything after it. This converter encodes with TextEncoder and decodes with TextDecoder, so multi-byte characters survive the round trip intact.
The grouping options exist because binary arrives in different shapes. Eight bits per group is the normal byte. Seven-bit groups turn up in older serial and SMS contexts where the eighth bit was a parity bit. If your input has no separators at all, the converter reads it in fixed-width chunks and will tell you when the total length is not divisible by the group size, which is the usual sign that a digit was lost in transit rather than that the encoding was wrong.
The same input is also shown in hexadecimal, octal and decimal, because binary is rarely the format you actually want to keep — it is four times longer than hex for the same information and correspondingly easier to mistype.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my accented character come back wrong?
Almost certainly because it was encoded as ASCII. Characters like é, ß or any emoji do not exist in ASCII's 128 slots — they need two to four bytes in UTF-8. Switch the encoding to UTF-8 and convert again; if the binary itself was produced as ASCII, the information was already lost at that point.
My binary will not decode. What is wrong with it?
Check the total number of digits. If it is not an exact multiple of the group size, one or more digits were dropped — usually when copying from a terminal that wrapped the line. The tool reports the remainder so you can see how many are missing.
What is the difference between 7-bit and 8-bit groups?
8 bits is a byte and is what you want in almost every modern context. 7-bit groups appear in older telecom and serial protocols where the eighth bit carried parity rather than data. If your source is anything written this century, use 8.
Can I convert a file rather than typed text?
Not here — this works on text. Representing an image or an archive as binary digits produces a string eight times larger than the file with no benefit, and Base64 is the format intended for that job.
