Morse Code Translator
Translate morse code
Translate morse code Runs locally in your browser
Input containing dots or dashes is decoded. Anything else is encoded.
About the
The Morse Code Translator converts text to Morse code and Morse code back to text, choosing the direction automatically by looking at what you typed: input containing dots or dashes is decoded, anything else is encoded. Letters are separated by spaces and words by a forward slash, which is the conventional written form. Characters outside the standard alphabet and digits are marked with a question mark in brackets rather than silently dropped, so you can see what did not translate.
Where people use the
- Encoding a message for a radio or a themed design.
- Decoding a Morse sequence from a puzzle or a capture-the-flag challenge.
- Learning the alphabet by comparing letters with their patterns.
- Checking whether a Morse sequence you transcribed is well formed.
How to use the
- 1
Paste text or Morse
Plain text is encoded. Anything containing a dot or a dash is treated as Morse and decoded.
- 2
Understand the separators
A space between letters, and a slash between words. When decoding, each space-separated group is read as one character.
- 3
Translate
The result appears immediately. Unknown characters appear as [?] rather than being removed.
- 4
Check the separators if decoding looks wrong
The most common failure is missing spaces between letters, which makes the whole string unreadable as a sequence of characters.
Tips and best practices
- Keep exactly one space between letters and a space-slash-space between words.
- Remove hyphens and punctuation from plain text before encoding, so the direction is detected correctly.
- Learn E (dot) and T (dash) first; they are the building blocks of everything else.
Frequently asked questions
How does it decide which way to translate?
It looks for a dot or a dash in your input. If either is present the input is treated as Morse; otherwise it is treated as text. That means ordinary text containing a hyphen may be misread, so remove punctuation if you get a strange result.
Why do some characters come out as [?]
Because they are outside the supported set. Standard Morse covers A to Z, 0 to 9 and a handful of punctuation marks. Accented letters and most symbols are not part of the code, so they cannot be represented.
What does the slash mean?
A word separator. In Morse, the pause between words is longer than the pause between letters, and the slash is the written equivalent of that longer pause.
Is Morse still used?
Yes, in aviation and maritime navigation, in amateur radio, and as an accessibility input method. It remains in the international distress signal SOS, which is three dots, three dashes, three dots with no letter gaps.
Does it handle lowercase input?
Yes. Input is lowercased before encoding, and decoded output is produced as lowercase letters, which you can then capitalise yourself.