Morse Code Translator

Frequently asked questions

What is SOS in Morse code?

Three dots, three dashes and three dots: ... --- ... Wikipedia reports that it entered German radio regulations on 1 April 1905 and the 1906 international radiotelegraph convention as a distinct sequence, and that reading it as the letters S O S came later. In the tool, SOS gives ... --- ... and ... --- ... decodes to SOS.

How do I write a space between words in Morse code?

With a slash. The tool puts one space between letters and " / " between words, so HELLO WORLD is .... . .-.. .-.. --- / .-- --- .-. .-.. -.. When decoding it splits words at the slash and letters at spaces.

What happens to accents, emoji and other characters?

A character with no code is left out and listed under the output, never guessed. "café 😀" gives -.-. .- ..-. and lists É and 😀.

How do I decode Morse code?

Press Morse to Text and paste dots and dashes with a space between letters and a slash between words. A token that is not Morse shows as ? and is listed: "... --- ... hello" decodes to SOS? Only the full stop and the hyphen are read as dot and dash, so Morse copied with • dots or – dashes needs them replaced first. Word gaps written as extra spaces are read as letter gaps, so ".... .. - .... . .-. ." decodes to HITHERE; put a slash between the words to get HI THERE.

Which punctuation marks does it support?

Eighteen: the period, comma, question mark, apostrophe, exclamation mark, slash, parentheses, ampersand, colon, semicolon, equals, plus, hyphen, underscore, quotation mark, dollar sign and at sign. Thirteen of them are in ITU-R M.1677-1, the International Morse recommendation; the exclamation mark, ampersand, semicolon, underscore and dollar sign are common extensions that it does not list. They are in the punctuation table on this page. Other marks, such as # or %, are left out and listed.

Can it play Morse code as sound?

Yes. Play sounds a 600 Hz tone at 5 to 40 words per minute, 20 by default, and Stop ends it. It plays the output in Text to Morse and the typed Morse in Morse to Text. The timing follows the PARIS standard: one unit is 1.2 ÷ WPM seconds, so a dot lasts 60 ms at 20 WPM and SOS takes 1.62 s. Only the first 2,000 Morse characters play. There is no flashing light. Each direction takes up to 20,000 characters, and a link such as ?text=hello fills the input in Text to Morse mode.