Morse code translator

Turn text into dots and dashes, or decode Morse back to words. Everything runs on your device.

Type or paste text and press Text → Morse to get the dot-and-dash version, or paste Morse and press Morse → text to read it back. The translator follows the international ITU standard, uses a single space between letters and a forward slash between words, and does the whole job in your browser without sending a character anywhere.

How to use it

1. Paste your text in the box and press Text → Morse to encode it.
2. To decode, paste Morse using a space between letters and a / between words, then press Morse → text.
3. Copy the result, or press Download .txt to save it. Nothing is uploaded.

What this tool does

This is a two-way converter. Text → Morse takes ordinary letters, digits and common punctuation and replaces each one with its sequence of dots and dashes. Morse → text does the reverse: give it dots and dashes and it hands back readable words. The two directions use the same lookup table, so a message you encode here will decode back to exactly what you started with.

The encoder is case-insensitive — Morse code does not distinguish capitals from lowercase, so Hello and HELLO produce the same signal. Letters inside a word are separated by a single space, and whole words are separated by a forward slash (/) with a space on each side. That spacing is not decoration: it is the only thing that tells the decoder where one letter ends and the next begins, which is why ... --- ... is three letters but ...---... run together is ambiguous.

How Morse code works

Morse code is a way of sending text as a series of on-off signals of two lengths: a short one called a dot (or dit) and a long one called a dash (or dah), where a dash lasts about three times as long as a dot. Every letter and digit has its own fixed pattern. The system was born in the 1830s and 1840s with Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail for the electric telegraph; the version almost everyone uses today is International Morse Code, standardised by the ITU.

Timing carries all the structure. Within a single letter the dots and dashes are separated by one dot-length of silence. Between two letters the gap is three dot-lengths — that is the single space you type here. Between two words the gap is seven dot-lengths — that is the slash. Get the gaps wrong and the same dots and dashes read as completely different words, which is why spacing matters far more in Morse than in ordinary typing.

The Morse code alphabet

The letters are not arranged for looks — the shortest codes (E is one dot, T is one dash) were deliberately given to the most common English letters so operators could send everyday text faster.

Examples

The famous distress call is the clearest example: SOS encodes as ... --- ... — three dots, three dashes, three dots. It was chosen not because it stands for "Save Our Souls" (that meaning was invented afterwards) but because the pattern is short, symmetrical and impossible to mistake for anything else.

A few more: HELLO becomes .... . .-.. .-.. ---, HI becomes .... .., and SOS SOS with a word gap becomes ... --- ... / ... --- .... Try pasting any of these into the decoder to see them turn back into text.

When you need it

• Distress and safety. SOS is still recognised worldwide; a flashlight, a whistle or a car horn can send it when nothing else works.
• Amateur (ham) radio. CW — continuous-wave Morse — punches through noise and weak signals better than voice, so operators still use it across the globe.
• Aviation and marine navigation. Radio beacons identify themselves by transmitting their code in Morse; pilots confirm a station by ear.
• Accessibility. People with limited movement can input text with a single switch, blinking or a puff-and-sip device, using dot and dash timing.
• Learning, puzzles and games. Escape rooms, geocaches, scouting badges and countless riddles hide messages in dots and dashes.

Doing it without this tool

You can encode by hand with the table above: look up each letter, write its dots and dashes, and leave a gap between letters. It is slow but completely reliable, and copying a few short messages by hand is the fastest way to start memorising the alphabet. Many people learn by sound instead of sight, listening to each letter as a rhythm rather than counting symbols.

To send in the real world you do not need any code table in front of you once the common letters stick: a torch, a mirror or a tapped finger is enough. This tool simply removes the lookup drudgery when you have more than a word or two to convert.

Privacy: your text never leaves your browser

Every conversion here happens in JavaScript on your own device. The text you paste, the Morse you decode and the result you copy are never sent to a server, never logged and never stored. There is no account and no upload step. Open your browser network panel while you translate and you will see no requests go out. You can even save this page and use it fully offline.

Related tools

See all text tools →

Frequently asked questions