Morse Code Translator

What is a Morse Code Translator?

A Morse code translator converts readable text into Morse code and Morse code back into text. It uses the International Morse alphabet, mapping each letter, digit and common punctuation mark to a unique pattern of dots and dashes. Type SOS and you get ... --- ...; paste that back and you get SOS. Everything runs instantly and privately in your browser.

What does this tool do?

It works in both directions. Going text to Morse, it takes each character, looks up its International Morse pattern, and joins those patterns with spaces, using a forward slash to mark word breaks. Going Morse to text, it splits your input back into letters and words and replaces each dot-dash pattern with the character it represents. The output updates live as you type, so you see the result immediately and can copy it.

How does it work?

The method is a direct lookup against the International Morse code alphabet. Every supported character (the 26 letters, the digits 0 to 9, and common punctuation) has one fixed sequence of dots and dashes. A dot is the short signal and a dash is the long signal; together they uniquely identify each character.

To convert text to Morse, the tool follows a simple rule for spacing:

1. Look up each character’s Morse pattern (for example, S is ...).
2. Separate one letter from the next with a single space.
3. Separate one word from the next with / (a space, a slash, then a space).

To convert Morse to text, it reverses the process. The input is split on the slash to find word boundaries, then each word is split on spaces to find individual letters, and every dot-dash pattern is matched back to its character. Characters with no Morse equivalent are skipped during encoding, so only translatable symbols appear in the output and the rest of your message still converts cleanly.

Examples

Each example below follows the exact logic above: look up the pattern, separate letters with a space, and separate words with a slash.

Example 1 — “SOS” becomes … --- …

1. S is ... (three dots).
2. O is --- (three dashes).
3. S is ... again, giving ... --- ... with single spaces between the letters.

Example 2 — “HI” becomes … ..

1. H is .... (four dots).
2. I is .. (two dots).
3. Joined with one space: .... ...

Example 3 — decoding ”… --- …” returns “SOS”.

1. The tool reads the three patterns separated by spaces.
2. ... maps back to S, --- maps back to O, ... maps back to S.
3. The result is SOS.

Word breaks use a slash. Because words are joined with /, a two-word message keeps that slash between the groups of letters, and decoding splits on the slash first to rebuild the original spacing between words.

International Morse code reference chart

These patterns are the same ones the tool uses, so the chart works as a quick lookup. Letters are shown with their dot-dash sequences; remember that letters are separated by a space and words by a slash.

Character	Morse	Character	Morse
A	.-	N	-.
B	-…	O	---
C	-.-.	P	.—.
D	-..	Q	—.-
E	.	R	.-.
F	..-.	S	…
G	—.	T	-
H	…	U	..-
I	..	V	…-
J	.---	W	.—
K	-.-	X	-..-
L	.-..	Y	-.—
M	—	Z	—..
1	.----	6	-…
2	..---	7	—…
3	…—	8	---..
4	…-	9	----.
5	…	0 (zero)	-----

Notice that E is a single dot and T is a single dash — the shortest, most common letters get the shortest patterns, which is a deliberate feature of the original code.

Common uses

Translating between text and Morse shows up in radio, education, accessibility and plenty of hobby projects. Typical situations include:

• Amateur radio operators and learners practising CW (continuous wave) by checking how a callsign or a word maps to dots and dashes.
• Students and teachers exploring how a fixed alphabet encodes language, or generating clean classroom examples without writing out every pattern by hand.
• Puzzle and escape-room fans decoding a string of dots and dashes back into readable words, or encoding a clue for someone else to solve.
• Makers and hobbyists preparing messages to flash on an LED, buzz on a speaker, or blink in a flashlight signal such as the famous ... --- ... distress call.

Tips and common mistakes

A few spacing details cause most of the confusion when moving between text and Morse:

• Keep the spaces between letters. The tool reads a single space as the gap between letters, so running patterns together makes them ambiguous and they will not decode the way you expect.
• Use the slash for word breaks. Words are separated by /, not by an extra space. Replacing the slash with a plain space merges your words into one when decoding.
• Mind the dot-dash characters. When decoding, use a period for a dot and a hyphen for a dash. Fancy bullet points or em dashes pasted from a document may not match the expected symbols.
• Morse is encoding, not encryption. Writing SOS as ... --- ... hides nothing, since anyone can decode it. Never treat Morse as a way to protect secrets.
• Unsupported symbols disappear. Characters with no Morse equivalent are skipped, so an emoji or an unusual glyph will not show up in the Morse output at all.

Limitations and notes

This tool covers the International Morse alphabet for letters, digits and common punctuation. Any character outside that set has no defined pattern and is skipped during encoding rather than guessed at, so the output stays accurate. Morse does not distinguish uppercase from lowercase, so sos and SOS produce the same ... --- .... The translation captures the written structure of Morse (the dots, dashes and spacing) rather than the precise audio timing, so it is ideal for reading, learning and decoding text. Everything happens locally: the conversion is plain JavaScript running in your browser, so your text is never uploaded, logged or stored, and the tool keeps working offline once the page has loaded.

For more developer-friendly conversions, pair this with the binary translator and the number base converter, encode strings with the base64 encode and decode tool or the hex to rgb converter, and browse the full Dev & Tech tools collection.