Morse Code Translator
Convert text to Morse and Morse to text instantly, listen to the dots and dashes with real sound and browse the full alphabet.
What is Morse code?
Morse code is an encoding system that represents every letter, number and sign with combinations of short signals (dots) and long signals (dashes). It was developed in the 1830s by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail for the electric telegraph, and for over a century it was the universal language of long-distance communication: telegraph lines, maritime radio and aviation.
A Morse code translator automates that conversion in both directions: type "hello" and you get .... . .-.. .-.. ---, or paste a sequence of dots and dashes and recover the original message. This tool does it instantly as you type, without uploading anything to a server.
Although digital communications have long replaced it, Morse is still alive among amateur radio operators, in scouting, escape rooms and as a teaching resource. And its most famous signal, SOS ( ... --- ... ), remains the international symbol of distress.
How to translate text to Morse step by step
Choose the translation direction: "Text → Morse" to encode your message or "Morse → Text" to decipher a sequence of dots and dashes.
Type or paste your message into the box. The translation appears instantly; if any character has no equivalent, the tool tells you below the result.
Press "Copy" to grab the result or "Play" to hear the Morse at the speed you prefer.
The full Morse alphabet
This is the complete international Morse alphabet the translator uses: all 26 letters, the 10 digits and the most common punctuation marks. Click any cell to copy its code.
Accented letters deserve a note: the basic international alphabet covers A–Z only, but the extension for other languages assigns codes to several special characters — the Spanish ñ is --.--, á is .--.- and é is ..-... This translator recognises them automatically; accents without a code of their own fold back to the base letter, exactly as real telegraph operators did.
Listen to the Morse: dots and dashes
Morse is not just read — it is heard. The whole system is built on one unit of time, the dot (dit). A dash lasts 3 dots, the silence between signals inside a letter lasts 1 dot, the silence between letters lasts 3 dots and the silence between words lasts 7. From that rhythm comes the WPM (words per minute) speed measure, calculated with the standard word "PARIS".
The "Play" button on this tool reproduces your message with a 600 Hz tone, the classic timbre of radiotelegraphy. Start at slow speed (12 WPM) if you are learning: experienced operators decode more than 25 WPM by ear, recognising each letter by its "melody" instead of counting dots and dashes.
Morse and binary: two ways to encode
Morse was, in a way, the precursor of digital encoding: it reduces all language to two symbols, just as binary reduces everything to zeros and ones. The difference is that Morse gives shorter codes to the most frequent letters (E is a single dot), while modern binary uses fixed lengths per byte.
If this family of encodings interests you, also try our text to binary translator: it converts any message to UTF-8 binary code and back, with full support for accents and emojis.