Morse Code Translator

How the translator works

International Morse code represents each letter, digit and common punctuation mark as a short pattern of dots and dashes. Typing normal text gives you the Morse; pasting dots, dashes and slashes gives you the text back. In Auto-detect mode the tool looks at what you typed: if it is only dots, dashes, spaces and slashes it decodes to text, otherwise it encodes to Morse. Any character it does not know is shown as a hash so you can spot it, with the unknown characters listed underneath.

Spacing rules

Getting the gaps right is what makes Morse readable. Within a letter, the pause between a dot and a dash is one unit. Between two letters the pause is three units, shown here as a single space. Between two words the pause is seven units, shown as a slash with spaces ( / ). So HELLO WORLD becomes .... . .-.. .-.. --- then / then .-- --- .-. .-.. -...

Playing it as sound

Press Play to hear the code as tones. A dot is one time unit of sound, a dash is three units, and the WPM slider sets how long a unit lasts - one unit is 1200 divided by your words per minute, in milliseconds. At 20 WPM that is 60 milliseconds. Slower speeds are easier to follow while you are learning; experienced operators read 20 WPM and beyond.

The full Morse alphabet

Need to encode a message a different way? Try the binary converter for text to binary, or the Base64 encoder for web-safe encoding. Counting characters for a signal? The character counter is handy.

Frequently asked questions