Hex to Text Converter

What the hex to text converter does

This takes a hexadecimal string and turns it back into readable text. Paste the hex in, press the button, and copy out the characters it spells.

It reverses writing text as hex. Hex is the form character codes take in a lot of practical places, so when you run into a block of it, this reads it back into plain words.

How to use it

1. Enter your hex. Paste the hex digits, for example 436f6465.
2. Press Convert. The decoded text appears in the output box.
3. Click the result to copy it. Tap the output to send it to your clipboard.

Press Reset to clear both boxes.

Read it two digits at a time

The key to decoding hex text is that each character is two hex digits. The everyday printable characters all have codes that fit in exactly two hex digits, so the hex runs together in pairs, and you read it two digits at a time. Each pair is read as a number, which gives a value the character codes use, and then you look up the character that number stands for. The pair 43 is the number 67, and 67 is the code for capital C.

Capitals or lowercase both work

Hex uses the letters A to F as digits, and here it does not matter whether you write them as capitals or in lowercase. The value of the letter is the same either way, so 6F and 6f both mean the number 111. You can paste hex in whichever case you have it, mixed even, and the tool reads it the same.

A worked example with real hex

Take 436f6465. Read it in pairs.

• 43 is the number 67, the code for capital C.
• 6f is the number 111, the code for lowercase o.
• 64 is the number 100, the code for lowercase d.
• 65 is the number 101, the code for lowercase e.

Put the characters in order and you get Code. The whole job was reading the hex two digits at a time and matching each pair to its character.

The hex you meet in the wild

The hex this tool reads is the same hex that shows up in a few everyday places. In a web address, characters that cannot appear directly are written as a percent sign and a two-digit hex code, so a space is %20. When a tool shows you the raw bytes of a file, a hex dump, each byte is two hex digits. Stripped of the percent signs or laid out from a dump, those are exactly the pairs you can drop in here to turn back into text.

Questions people ask

How do I decode hex into text?

Read the hex two digits at a time, turn each pair into its number, and look up the character that number stands for in ASCII. The characters in order are your text.

Why two digits per character?

Because the everyday printable characters have codes that fit in exactly two hex digits. That even width is why the hex runs together and is read in pairs.

Does the letter case of the hex matter?

No. A to F and a to f have the same values, so you can enter the hex in capitals, lowercase, or a mix, and it decodes the same.

What if there is an odd number of hex digits?

Then the digits do not pair up cleanly into whole characters, since each character needs two. Hex text should come in complete two-digit pairs.

References

1. Cerf, V. ASCII format for Network Interchange. RFC 20, Internet Engineering Task Force. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc20
2. Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and Masinter, L. Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax. RFC 3986, Internet Engineering Task Force. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986