Morse Code Translator

How to use the Morse code translator

Type plain text in the Text box and the Morse appears instantly in the dark box; paste dots and dashes into the Morse code box and it turns back into text. Both boxes are editable, so you can fix a single character on either side. The output uses a full stop for a dot, a hyphen for a dash, one space between letters and a slash between words. When decoding, the translator is forgiving: it accepts ·, •, − and – from other websites, a vertical bar or two-plus spaces as a word break, and one line per line.

Press Play to hear it. Speed runs from 5 to 40 words per minute and the tone from 400 to 1,000 Hz. Tick Flashing light to blink a signal lamp in time with the sound (or mute the sound and use the light alone), and Download WAV saves the same audio as a file. The address bar updates as you type, so Copy share link gives a link that reopens this exact message and speed.

Which Morse code this is

This is International Morse code as defined by the ITU in Recommendation ITU-R M.1677-1 (2009, still in force). It covers the 26 letters, the accented É, the ten figures and 13 punctuation marks and signs, plus service signals (prosigns). Morse has no lowercase, so “hello” and “HELLO” are the same; decoded text is shown in capitals. It is not the older American (railroad) Morse, which used different codes for several letters.

Where the ITU text gives an instruction, the translator follows it: the multiplication sign × is sent as the letter X (§3.2), and a percent sign is sent as 0/0, joined to a number with a hyphen, so “2%” is transmitted as 2-0/0 (§3.3). Characters with no ITU signal (such as &, #, * and emoji) are listed as skipped rather than given an invented code. Accented letters other than É are sent as the plain letter, with a note. A handful of signals used by radio amateurs but absent from the ITU list are translated and flagged as non-standard: ! = -.-.--, ; = -.-.-., _ = ..--.-, $ = ...-..-.

Worked example: HELLO

Joined with four 3-unit letter gaps, .... . .-.. .-.. --- is 49 units long — 2.94 seconds at 20 WPM (11 dots and 5 dashes).

Morse timing: dots, dashes and gaps

ITU-R M.1677-1 fixes the rhythm in units: a dash is three dots; the gap between the parts of one character is one unit; the gap between letters is three units; and the gap between words is seven. Speed in words per minute is measured with the standard word PARIS, which is exactly 50 units including its final word gap, so one unit = 1,200 ÷ WPM milliseconds.

Farnsworth spacing

Learners often hear characters at full speed but with longer gaps, so each letter keeps its musical shape. That is Farnsworth timing, and the player uses the formula published by the ARRL (Jon Bloom, KE3Z, “A Standard for Morse Timing Using the Farnsworth Technique”): the extra delay per word is (60c − 37.2s) ÷ (s × c) seconds, split 3:7 between letter and word gaps, where c is the character speed and s the overall speed. For characters at 18 WPM and an overall 5 WPM, letter gaps stretch to 1.57 s and word gaps to 3.66 s while each dot stays 66.7 ms.

Prosigns (procedural signals)

Prosigns are sent as one character with no letter gap. Type them in angle brackets. Some share a signal with a punctuation mark, so when decoding, the translator shows the punctuation (for example .-.-. appears as +).

SOS deserves a note: it is a single distress signal, ...---... (23 units), not three separate letters (27 units with gaps). At 20 WPM that is 1.38 s as a prosign. See the SOS in Morse code page for its history, or the full Morse alphabet chart and numbers and punctuation chart to print.