# Text to Binary Guide

Convert text to its binary representation and back.

- Tool: https://ilham.dev/tools/text-to-binary/
- Guide URL: https://ilham.dev/guides/text-to-binary/
- Tool guides index: https://ilham.dev/guides/tools/
- Broader guide: Text Formatting and Cleanup (https://ilham.dev/guides/text-formatting-and-cleanup/)

## What it does

Convert text to its UTF-8 bytes written in binary, and back again. Each character is shown as the eight bits that encode it, which is the clearest way to see how a string becomes bytes on the wire.

## Use the tool

Open https://ilham.dev/tools/text-to-binary/, add the input the tool asks for, run it, and check the output before using it elsewhere.

## Input and output

- Input: text.
- Output: text.
- Category: Encoding.

## Privacy and processing
Processing happens locally in your browser. This tool does not upload the input to ilham.dev.

## Questions

### Why is one character sometimes more than eight bits?

Because it is not ASCII. UTF-8 uses one byte for ASCII characters and up to four for others, so an accented letter or an emoji comes out as two or more groups of eight bits.