Text to Hex Converter

What the text to hex converter does

This turns text into hexadecimal, writing the code of each character in base 16. Type your words in, press the button, and copy out the hex.

Hex is the form character codes most often take in the practical corners of computing, the place where text meets web addresses, raw data, and the inside of files, so this is a handy view to have.

How to use it

1. Enter your text. Type a letter, a word, or a sentence, for example Hex.
2. Press Convert. The hex 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.

Each character's code, written in hex

As always with text, the starting point is that every character has a number behind it, its code, fixed by the ASCII standard for the basic English set. Capital H is 72, lowercase e is 101, and so on. This tool takes each of those codes and writes it in hexadecimal, the base-16 shorthand that uses the digits 0 to 9 and then the letters a to f. Worth noting up front: the letters in the output come out in lowercase here.

Two digits a character, run together

There is a pleasant tidiness to text in hex. The everyday printable characters all have codes that fit in exactly two hex digits, so every character becomes a neat pair. That is why the output runs together with no separators and still stays readable: you simply read it two digits at a time, and each pair is one character. Where binary needs eight digits a character and octal needs spaces to stay clear, hex sits in the sweet spot of two compact digits each.

A worked example with real letters

Take the word Hex, three characters.

• H has the code 72, which is 4 sixteens and 8 ones, so 48 in hex.
• e has the code 101, which in hex is 65.
• x has the code 120, which in hex is 78.

Run the pairs together and you get 486578. Read it back two digits at a time, 48 then 65 then 78, and you recover H, e, x.

Where you meet text in hex

These hex codes are everywhere once you know to look. In a web address, characters that cannot appear directly are written as a percent sign followed by their two-digit hex code, which is why a space in a URL shows up as %20, since 20 is the hex code for a space. On a web page, you can also write a character by its hex code with H, which displays as H, the x marking the number as hex. And when a tool shows you the raw contents of a file, a hex dump, it lists each byte as two hex digits, the very same codes. Learning to read text as hex pays off across all three.

Questions people ask

How is text converted to hex?

Each character is replaced by its numeric code, the number ASCII assigns it, and that code is written in base 16. The codes run together, two hex digits per character.

Why does each character become two digits?

Because the everyday printable characters have codes that fit in exactly two hex digits. That even width is what lets the output run together with no separators and still be read in pairs.

Are the letters uppercase or lowercase?

This tool returns the hex in lowercase, so you will see a to f rather than A to F. The values are the same either way.

Why does a space show as %20 in a web link?

That is percent-encoding. A character that cannot sit directly in a URL is written as a percent sign plus its two-digit hex code, and 20 is the hex code for a space.

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