Paste plain text or dots and dashes, then click the convert button; the other form appears on the right.
Morse Code Translator
FreetoolOnline editorial teamTranslate text to ITU Morse code, or Morse code back to text, in the browser.
Paste plain text or dots and dashes, click convert, and copy the result. Translation runs locally - nothing is uploaded.
This page does not play audio beeps or cover every prosign.
Depth: how the encode direction and separators actually behave
When you click Convert, the translator reads whatever sits in the input pane and decides the direction for you: mostly-letters text encodes to Morse, while a string made mostly of dots, dashes, spaces, and slashes decodes back to letters, so you rarely have to flip a switch by hand. In the encode direction, a single space separates the code for two letters inside the same word and a forward slash marks the gap between words, which matters when you compare output against a printed key that runs everything together - "SOS OK" becomes "... --- ... / --- -.-" with exactly one slash, not a blank run you have to count. Any character the ITU table does not cover, such as an emoji or a curly bracket, is written as a single "?" rather than silently dropped, so a "?" appearing in your Morse output is a signal that one source character had no defined code, not a bug. Empty input is treated as a no-op: clicking Convert on a blank pane leaves the output pane untouched instead of clearing prior work, which lets you re-run the same text after a small edit without losing the last result. Because the whole transform is a local string operation, a 5,000-character message and a 5-character one both finish in the same click with no upload step, and the decode path tolerates ragged spacing - two or three spaces between groups still parse the same as one.
How the translator decides which direction to run, and what counts as one word
Morse Code Translator does not ask you to pick a direction. It measures how much of what you pasted looks like Morse - specifically, what share of the characters are dots, dashes, forward slashes, or blank space - and decodes when that share reaches 70 percent, otherwise it encodes your text. A short word like "well-known" still encodes normally, because one hyphen out of ten characters stays well under that threshold. The same check also cleans up look-alike punctuation before matching: a middle dot or bullet copied from another document counts as a period, and an en dash, em dash, or minus sign counts as a hyphen, so Morse pasted out of a word processor's "smart" formatting still decodes correctly. Word boundaries on the decode side are stricter than they might look: a single space between two letter codes keeps both letters in the same word, and it takes two or more spaces - or a forward slash, or a line break - to start a new word. Typing "... ---" with one space between the groups decodes to "so" as a single word; adding a second space decodes the same input to "s o" as two separate letters. When your decoded output runs letters together that you expected to see split apart, check the number of spaces between the groups first.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does direction detection work?
If the input is mostly dots, dashes, spaces, and slashes, it decodes to text. Otherwise it encodes plain text to Morse.
Is my text uploaded?
No. Translation runs in this tab with pure JavaScript.
Does it play Morse as audio?
No. This page only converts text. Audio beep playback is not offered.
What alphabet is supported?
Letters A-Z, digits 0-9, and common punctuation from the ITU map. Unknown characters become a question mark.
Exactly which punctuation marks are covered?
18 marks beyond letters and digits: period, comma, question mark, apostrophe, exclamation point, forward slash, both parentheses, ampersand, colon, semicolon, equals sign, plus sign, hyphen, underscore, double quote, dollar sign, and at sign. Anything outside this list, such as an emoji, converts as a single question mark instead.
Does uppercase or lowercase input change the result?
No. The tool lowercases your text before converting it, so "SOS" and "sos" produce exactly the same Morse output. Letter case is not distinguished on the encode side, and Morse code has no case to restore on decode.
Does it matter how many spaces I leave between words before converting?
Not on the encode side. Typing "hello world" with one space or three spaces between the words produces the identical Morse output, with exactly one forward slash marking the word gap either way.