Text To Hex Converter
Base32, Base58, Base85 And Bytes

What A Text To Hex Converter Does For You

Computers store text as numbers. Each character has a code, and each code takes one or more bytes. Sometimes you need to see those bytes.

A text to hex converter shows them. First, type or paste your text. Then pick a format. The bytes appear at once, and you copy them with one click.

Also, it works both ways. Paste hex, Base32 or a list of bytes, and the tool turns it back into text. So you can read a dump from a log, a packet or a database.

Everything runs in your browser. So your text never leaves your device.

How Text Becomes Bytes

Text is a list of characters. A computer first turns each character into a number, then into bytes. The usual way is UTF-8. In UTF-8, plain English letters take one byte, and most accented letters take two.

So the word Hi becomes the bytes 72 and 105, which is 48 69 in hex.

For more detail, see: RFC 4648, the Base16, Base32 and Base64 encodings.

Text To Hex

Hex writes each byte as two digits from 0 to 9 and a to f. Pick a separator, add a 0x before each byte if you like, and choose capital letters. Then copy the result.

For example, Hello becomes 48 65 6c 6c 6f.

Hex To Text

First, switch the direction to Code to text and paste your hex. The tool ignores spaces, commas, colons and prefixes such as 0x. Then it joins the digits in pairs and reads the bytes as UTF-8.

Base32

Base32 uses 32 safe characters: the capital letters A to Z and the digits 2 to 7. It follows the standard in RFC 4648. People use it for one time password keys and for names that must not depend on case.

Also, the tool adds equals signs as padding, unless you turn them off.

Base58

Base58 drops the look alike characters 0, O, I and l. So it is easier to read and to type. Also, bitcoin addresses and many short ids use it. Leading zero bytes become leading ones.

Base85

Base85, also called Ascii85, packs four bytes into five characters. So it is shorter than Base64. PDF and PostScript files use it.

Then a group of four zero bytes becomes a single letter z. Also, you can wrap the result in the Adobe marks.

Decimal And Octal Bytes

Each byte can also show as a decimal number from 0 to 255, or as an octal number from 000 to 377. So Hi! becomes 72 105 33 in decimal. So use it for lookup tables and old protocols.

Unicode Code Points

A code point is the number that Unicode gives each character. Then the tool writes it as U+0041. It also offers the escape form that JavaScript uses.

For example, a smiling face is one code point, U+1F600, but it takes four bytes in UTF-8.

UTF-16 Code Units

JavaScript and Windows store text as UTF-16 code units. Each unit is a 16 bit number. So an emoji takes two units, called a surrogate pair. The tool lists the units in hex, so you can see the pair.

Characters Versus Bytes

The stats show three numbers. Characters counts what you see. UTF-8 bytes counts the storage. Encoded length counts the characters of the result. So a short emoji text can have more bytes than characters.

Invalid Input

If the text holds a wrong character, the tool says so. An odd number of hex digits also gives an error, because a byte needs two.

If the bytes do not form valid UTF-8, the tool still shows the text. Then it warns you about the replacement signs.

Common Uses

Developers use hex to read network data, check file headers, debug encodings and write test data. Also, Base32 and Base58 show up in keys and ids. So one tool saves a lot of switching.

Safe By Design

First, the tool works in your browser. It sends nothing, and it stores nothing. So your text stays yours.