Morse Code Translator
Local only — nothing is uploaded unless you save or share it.
A morse code translator both ways — text to morse code, and morse code to text.
- Type or paste your text — or paste morse code, if that is what you have.
- The translation appears as you type, in whichever direction makes sense.
- Press play to hear it, and set the speed in words per minute.
Save this tool
Keep Morse Code Translator handy
Use your browser's Share menu, then “Add to Home Screen”.
About this tool
A morse code translator that works in both directions and tells you which one it is doing. Paste ordinary writing and you get dots and dashes; paste dots and dashes and you get the writing back. It recognises which you have given it, so there is no switch to set wrongly — and if what you paste is neither, it says so rather than returning a line of question marks. It uses International Morse, the ITU standard used by every operator outside a handful of historical American railway lines: twenty-six letters, ten digits, the common punctuation, and the accented letters the standard actually defines. Words are separated by a slash, which is the written convention, and the decoder accepts the several other things people use instead. You can also hear it. Press play and the result is sounded at a speed you set in words per minute, with the standard timing where a dash is three times a dot and the gap between words is seven. That is the part a chart cannot give you, and the part anybody learning morse actually needs, because morse is heard as rhythm rather than read as symbols. Everything happens in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, and it works offline once the page has loaded.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert text to morse code?
Type the text and it is translated as you go. Letters are separated by a space and words by a slash, which is the written convention — “HI THERE” becomes “.... .. / - .... . .-. .”. Case does not matter, because morse has none: there is no way to write a capital letter, which is why messages are conventionally read as upper case.
How do I decode morse code to text?
Paste the dots and dashes in the same box. As a morse code decoder it works out that is what you have given it and translates the other way, so there is nothing to switch. It accepts the variations people write in practice: dots as periods or the character ·, dashes as hyphens or –, and words divided by a slash, a double space or a vertical bar.
What is SOS in morse code?
Three dots, three dashes, three dots: “... --- ...”. It is worth knowing that SOS is not really an abbreviation of anything — it was chosen in 1906 because that unbroken rhythm is unmistakable and hard to garble, and the “save our souls” reading was invented afterwards. Properly it is sent as one continuous signal with no letter gaps, which is why it sounds different from an S, an O and an S sent separately.
Which morse code alphabet does this use?
International Morse, as defined by the ITU. It is what every operator uses today, and it differs from the original American Morse in a handful of letters and in its use of internal spaces — so a message encoded here would confuse a 19th-century railway telegrapher and nobody since.
Why can I hear it as well as read it?
Because morse is a rhythm, not a set of shapes. Nobody who can actually use it is reading dots off a page; they are hearing “dah-di-dah-dit” as one sound. The player uses the standard timing — a dash three times the length of a dot, a gap of one between symbols, three between letters and seven between words — at whatever words per minute you set, so what you hear is what a real transmission sounds like.
What happens to characters morse cannot represent?
They are shown in the output between angle brackets rather than silently dropped, so you can see exactly what was lost. Morse has no way to write most symbols — no hash, no percent, no curly braces — and a translator that quietly deletes them hands you something that looks complete and is not.
Help improve this tool
Found a bug, want a change, or need a tool we don't have?
You have an unsent draft.
Thanks — that's with us. You'll find the reply in your inbox.Go to my messages