Morse Code Translator

How to use the translator

1. Type or paste text in the Text box. Its Morse code appears below as you type, letters separated by a space and words by a slash.
2. Or type Morse in the Morse code box, with dots and dashes. The text appears above. You can also paste Morse that uses · and −, or that separates words with three spaces instead of a slash.
3. Press Play to hear it. The light flashes with each beep. Choose the speed in words per minute (WPM) and the pitch of the tone.
4. Download WAV saves the sound as an audio file you can play anywhere. Copy share link copies a link that opens this page with your text in it.

Letters with accents are sent as plain letters, so é is sent as E and ß as SS, and the page tells you when it does. Characters that have no Morse code, such as % or emoji, are skipped and listed under the box. In the Morse code box, a group of dots and dashes that isn’t a Morse character is shown in square brackets.

How Morse code timing works

Morse code is built from one length of time, the unit. A dot is one unit long and a dash three. Inside a letter, the dots and dashes are one unit apart. Letters are three units apart, and words seven.

Speed is measured in words per minute using the word PARIS as the standard: PARIS, with the gap after it, is exactly 50 units long. At 20 WPM you send PARIS 20 times a minute, so one unit is 60 milliseconds, a dash 180 and the gap between words 420. In general, one unit lasts 1200 ÷ WPM milliseconds.

Farnsworth spacing

Farnsworth spacing sends each letter at full speed but leaves longer gaps between letters and words, so the overall speed is slower. Learners use it to hear each letter as one sound, a rhythm, instead of counting dots. With characters at 20 WPM and an overall speed of 10 WPM, each letter sounds as it would at 20 WPM, but the gaps between letters stretch from 0.18 to about 0.65 seconds. The spacing follows the ARRL’s formula.

A short history of Morse code

Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail developed their code for the electric telegraph in the late 1830s and 1840s. In 1844 Morse sent “What hath God wrought” on the first long-distance telegraph line in the United States, from Washington to Baltimore. That original code, now called American Morse, used several lengths of dash and gaps inside some letters.

In Europe, Friedrich Gerke simplified it in 1848, and his version, with a few changes, became the International Morse code adopted in 1865. That’s the code on this page, as the International Telecommunication Union defines it today. It reached ships by radio at the start of the 20th century, and SOS (· · · − − − · · ·) became the international distress signal in 1906. Ships stopped relying on Morse for distress calls in 1999, when satellite systems replaced it, but radio amateurs still use it every day.

Questions

Which characters can I translate?

The 26 letters, the digits 0 to 9, and the punctuation in the chart above. Most come from the International Telecommunication Union’s standard. Five of them (! & ; _ $) aren’t in that standard but are widely used, so the translator sends them too. Morse doesn’t tell capitals from small letters, so text from Morse is in capitals.

What does the slash mean?

In written Morse, a slash between groups marks the gap between two words. The slash character itself has its own code, − · · − ·, shown in the chart.

Is what I type sent anywhere?

No. The translation, the sound and the WAV file are all made in your browser. A share link puts your text after the # in the address, a part that browsers never send to a server, but anyone you send the link to can read it.

Why can’t I hear anything?

Check that your device’s volume is up. On an iPhone, the sound plays even with the silent switch on in recent versions of Safari; in older ones, turn the silent switch off.

Why doesn’t Vibrate show up?

Vibration works only in browsers that support it, such as Chrome on Android. Safari on iPhone doesn’t, so the option isn’t shown there.

What is a good speed to learn at?

Learning methods such as Koch’s send each letter at 15 to 20 WPM from the start, so you learn its sound instead of counting dots and dashes, with Farnsworth spacing to slow the gaps while you’re new.

Keyboard

More Morse code

• Morse Code Alphabet Quiz: name the letter or number for each code, against the clock
• Morse Code Trainer: learn to copy Morse by ear with the Koch method, your progress saved
• Secret Morse Code Decoder for kids: decode animal names and beep your own name, in our Kids section

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• Morse Code Alphabet: Read the dots and dashes: name the letter or number for every Morse code.
• Morse Code Trainer: Learn Morse code by ear, two characters at a time, with the Koch method.
• Greek Alphabet: Name all 24 letters of the Greek alphabet, from their shapes.
• NATO Phonetic Alphabet: Name the code word for every letter, A to Z.
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