This page is for a quick, inspectable translation—not audio-file recognition or a hidden guess. It handles the International Morse symbols listed here, shows when input cannot be represented, and keeps conversion and sound generation inside the browser.
Translate in five steps
- Choose Text → Morse to encode a message or Morse → Text to decode one.
- Enter the source in the Input box. The note below it shows the accepted characters or spacing.
- Press Translate. Correct any reported unsupported character or invalid Morse token if the result contains a gap or question mark.
- Use Copy result to place the visible output on your clipboard.
- For a valid Morse result, select 5–40 WPM and press Play Morse. Stop at any time; changing speed stops the current playback so the next run uses the new value.
How text becomes dots and dashes
International Morse code assigns a fixed signal pattern to each supported letter, digit and punctuation mark. For example, A is .- and N is -.; the translator uppercases English letters because Morse does not preserve case. A single space separates encoded characters, while a spaced slash separates words. The conversion is a table lookup rather than language translation, encryption or an attempt to understand the meaning of a sentence.
Sound adds timing to the written pattern. One dot lasts one base unit and a dash lasts three. Signals inside a character have one silent unit between them, letters have three, and words have seven. Playback speed uses the conventional PARIS relationship, so one base unit is 1,200 divided by the selected words per minute. The visible Morse output and the audio schedule come from the same result.
Examples you can verify
Example 1: “SOS 2026” becomes “... --- ... / ..--- ----- ..--- -....”. The three letters are separated by single spaces, and the slash marks the word boundary before the digits. Playing it produces the familiar three short, three long and three short signals before the number.
Example 2: decoding “.--. .-.. . .- ... . / .-- .- .. -” returns “PLEASE WAIT”. If you enter “... --- ... / .--.-.”, the second word decodes as @ because .--.-. is the supported at-sign pattern. These examples use exactly the same table and spacing rules as the tool, not a separate demonstration.
Spacing, supported characters and errors
In Morse → Text mode, use a period or middot for a dot and a hyphen or typographic dash for a dash. Put one space between letters and / or at least three spaces between words. A continuous “...---...” is one token, not three guessed letters. An unrecognized token becomes ? with its position; valid neighbors are still decoded and only valid tokens can be played.
Text mode supports A–Z, 0–9, and period, comma, question mark, apostrophe, exclamation mark, slash, parentheses, ampersand, colon, semicolon, equals, plus, hyphen, underscore, quotation mark, dollar sign and at sign. Accented letters, emoji and other scripts are reported with positions and omitted rather than invented.
Empty input or more than 5,000 characters produces a field-linked error without clearing your text. For ?, look for joined patterns, a non-Morse character or a missing word separator. For omitted text, rewrite the reported character with supported English letters or punctuation.
Audio, copying, privacy and safe expectations
Choose a slower speed for learning and a faster one for familiar text. WPM changes every unit together; there is no Farnsworth spacing, pitch control, light, vibration or repeat. Play again restarts, Stop ends the oscillator, and changing speed stops playback. Browser policy requires the Play press, so translation never starts sound automatically.
The tones help with study and checking a written message, but cannot decode a microphone, recording, radio, image or flashing light. Joined prosigns, noisy signals and non-International systems need another specialist tool and human review.
Copy result copies the visible spaced Morse or uppercase text with ? markers. It creates no file, history or share link; select the output manually if clipboard access fails. Conversion and Web Audio run in the page with no account, upload, database or feature-specific analytics event. Morse is an encoding, not secure encryption: anyone who knows the code can read the copied message.