Hex to Text Converter

This converter reads hex as whole bytes and gives back the text they spell. For one code value rather than a message, use Hex to ASCII; for a plain number, use Hex to Decimal.

Going the other way? Convert text back to hex →

How do you convert hex to text?

Hex to text conversion reads each group of hexadecimal digits as one code, then replaces that code with the character it stands for, so 2 groups give 2 characters.

1. Split the input into hexadecimal pairs. The first group is 48.
2. Read that group as a number. 48 is 72.
3. Replace the number with its character. 72 is H.
4. Repeat for every group and join the characters in order: 48 69 = Hi.

Hexadecimal to Text Conversion Table

Every letter, digit and the space, with its code in all four bases. Find the character in the first column and read across: the Dec column is the code the method uses, and the Hex column is what this converter reads — 2 digits per character, zero-padded on the left. That column uses the digit set 0–9, A–F (A=10 … F=15; case-insensitive) and nothing else, each place worth 16ⁿ, and a value marked with the 0x prefix means the same thing. 0b marks binary, 0o octal, 0x hexadecimal; a leading # marks a hex colour. Hexadecimal is not case-sensitive (FF = ff); iToolHub writes hex digits in uppercase. This page shows the rows you need; ASCII code chart (decimal, hex, octal, binary) carries all 128.

The base this page writes, defined by the digits it uses, how a value is marked, and what each position is worth.

Worked Example: 48 69 to Text

One group at a time, with the working written out. This is the same grid the converter shows when you turn on "show steps".

Start at the left. The first group is 48, which reads as 72, and 72 is the code for H. The groups are all the same width, so there is no guesswork about where one ends and the next begins.

The rest follow the same way: 69 is 105, which is i. Joining the characters in the order the groups arrived gives Hi. Read a group in the wrong place and every character after it shifts, which is why the width matters more than the separator does.

Check it in reverse

The value goes back the way it came. Read 48 is 72, and 72 is H; read 69 is 105, and 105 is i. Nothing is lost on the return trip, because every character keeps one group of its own and the groups keep their order. A decoder needs no extra information from the encoder — the fixed width tells it where each group ends, and the table tells it what each code means. To verify the result by hand, encode the text result back to hex and compare it with what you started from.

Worked examples: hex to text

Each example gives the value first, then the working. Click a value to load it in the converter.

Every example above reverses exactly — write the same characters back as hex bytes.

What Changes the Text Output?

Spaces and line breaks

A space is a character like any other: code 32, or 20. A trailing space converts too, which is the usual reason an output runs one group longer than expected.

Characters outside ASCII

UTF-8 encodes each character in 1 to 4 bytes. Characters 0–127 use one byte identical to ASCII, so ASCII text is valid UTF-8. Above code 127 UTF-8 uses more than one byte per character, so the byte count stops matching the character count. é is U+00E9 and encodes as C3 A9 (2 bytes); € is U+20AC and encodes as E2 82 AC (3 bytes); 😀 is U+1F600 and encodes as F0 9F 98 80 (4 bytes). Written the way this page writes them, those are é = C3 A9, € = E2 82 AC and 😀 = F0 9F 98 80. look up any ASCII code from 0 to 127 sets out why.

Width and padding

ASCII defines 128 characters, codes 0–127, using 7 bits; in practice each code is stored in one 8-bit byte with a leading 0. That is why A is 41 here, not 41. Uppercase and lowercase differ by 32, which is bit 5, so a is 61.

Separator choice

The space between groups is a display choice; the bytes do not change. iToolHub's text-to-binary and text-to-hex converters write one 8-bit byte per character, separated by spaces. Pick no separator when the output feeds another program, a comma for a spreadsheet.

Hex to Text in Code

The same rule in one line. Both read the codes and return the original string.

Python: bytes(int(g, 16) for g in s.split()).decode('utf-8')

JavaScript: new TextDecoder().decode(new Uint8Array(s.split(/\s+/).map(g => parseInt(g, 16))))

Common Mistakes

• Dropping the leading zero, so A reads 41 instead of 41. The output then splits into the wrong groups.
• Mixing widths inside one string. The first half decodes; the rest is noise.
• Pasting codes instead of characters — that is a different conversion, and it lives on hex to ASCII code lookup.
• Forgetting that the space between words is its own group, 20. The counts then disagree.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Conversions

• Input in octal instead? look up the character for an octal ASCII code.
• Input in decimal instead? dec to ASCII code lookup.
• Input in text instead? character to ASCII code lookup.
• Input in binary instead? read binary bytes as a message.
• Input in text instead? turn text into binary code.
• Input in ASCII codes instead? ASCII code to character lookup.

The rest of the family sits on pick another conversion from the grid.