Morse Code Translator

How to use the Morse code translator

1. Type or paste your text into the box, or press Example to load SOS Help is on the way.
2. Choose the Direction: Text → Morse (the default) or Morse → text. The result updates as you type.
3. Read any note under the result. It lists characters that have no Morse code (No Morse code for: …) or dot-and-dash groups the tool could not read (Not recognized: …).
4. Set Playback speed (wpm) and press ▶ Play sound to hear the code. Press Copy or Download .txt to keep the result, or Use as input to translate it back and check it.

The text never leaves your browser: the translation and the sound are both made on your device.

How text is turned into Morse

The translator follows the International Morse code in ITU-R M.1677-1 for letters, digits and the main punctuation marks, and writes it with plain characters you can paste anywhere:

• A dot is . and a dash is -.
• Letters inside a word are separated by one space.
• Words are separated by space, slash, space (/). Several spaces or a tab between words still give a single /.
• Line breaks are kept, so a list of five lines becomes five lines of Morse.
• Capital and small letters are the same: Hello and HELLO give the same code.
• Accents are dropped: é is sent as E and ñ as N, so José becomes .--- --- ... .. (The ITU list does have a code for an accented e, ..-... The tool does not write it, but it reads ..-.. as É when decoding.)
• Characters without a code are left out and named in the note: emoji, symbols such as %, #, * and ♥, and letters such as ß.

For a percentage, the ITU rule is to send 0/0 after the number joined by a hyphen, so type 2-0/0 if you need 2% in proper Morse.

How Morse is turned back into text

In Morse → text mode the tool splits your input into words, then letters:

So .... .. - .... . .-. . (three spaces in the middle) gives HI THERE, while the same code with two spaces gives HITHERE. Dots and dashes copied from a web page or a PDF often use bullet or dash characters instead of . and -; the tool accepts them, so ••• ––– ••• decodes to SOS.

The output is always in capital letters. Two codes are decoded in addition to the table below: ..-.. decodes as É (the ITU accented e) and ...---..., SOS sent as one signal without letter gaps, decodes as SOS. A group that matches no code becomes � and is listed in the note (Not recognized: …), for example ........ (eight dots, the ITU error signal).

The Morse code alphabet, numbers and punctuation

These are the 54 characters the translator encodes and decodes. Letters and digits follow ITU-R M.1677-1.

The marks in the last rows, ! & ; _ $, are not in the ITU recommendation. The tool includes them, but someone decoding by the ITU list may not know them; in the ITU list .-... is the wait signal, not &.

Playback speed and timing

The sound follows the ITU spacing rules: a dash lasts three dots, the gap inside a letter is one dot, the gap between letters three dots and the gap between words seven dots. Speed is measured with the standard word PARIS, which takes exactly 50 dot lengths including the gap after it, so one dot lasts 1.2 seconds divided by the words per minute.

Values outside 5 to 40 are limited to that range. Pressing the button again while a message is still playing stops it and starts again from the beginning, so you can change the speed and press ▶ Play sound to hear the new one.

In Morse → text mode the button plays the code you typed, read the same way as the decoder: • and · sound as dots, –, — and − as dashes, one or two spaces as a letter gap (three dots), and /, |, three or more spaces or a line break as a word gap (seven dots).

When people use it

• Jewelry, tattoos and gifts. Names, initials and dates turned into a line of dots and dashes for a necklace, bracelet or engraving. Check the spaces between letters on the final design.
• Puzzles, escape rooms and geocaches. Decode a clue written as dots and dashes, or encode one; Use as input lets you check that it reads back correctly.
• Learning Morse. Type practice words, listen at a slow speed, then raise the wpm. The cheat sheet beside the tool lists the letters with the shortest codes.
• Classes and scouting. Show how a message is built letter by letter, then compare it with other ways of encoding text, such as binary or a Caesar cipher.

Questions