Morse code translator

How to use the Morse code translator

1. Type text in the Text box; the Morse code appears in the other box as you type. Or paste dots and dashes into the Morse code box to read them as text.
2. Tap Play to hear it. Set the speed from 5 to 40 words per minute, the tone from 300 to 1,200 Hz, and the volume (it starts low).
3. Learning? Set Farnsworth to 18 WPM letters with a speed of 8: each letter keeps its quick, true rhythm, and only the gaps between letters and words get longer.
4. Tap Download WAV to keep the sound as a file, or tick Flash the light or Vibrate to send it as light or buzzes.
5. To read Morse you hear, open a recording or tap Use microphone under Decode Morse from sound. The text appears with the speed it measured.

Morse code timing, worked out

The ITU sets every length in dots: a dash is three dots, the gap inside a letter is one dot, the gap between letters three, and between words seven. Speed in words per minute counts the word PARIS, which is exactly 50 dots long with its word gap, so a dot lasts 1.2 ÷ WPM seconds.

At 20 WPM a dot is 60 ms, a dash and a letter gap are 180 ms, and a word gap is 420 ms. PARIS alone, without the gap after it, is 43 dots: 2.58 seconds, and that is the length of the WAV this page saves for it (no silence is added at the end).

Farnsworth 18/8: letters are sent at 18 WPM, so a dot is 66.7 ms. Their 31 dots of sound and inner gaps take 2.07 s, and the word must still last 60 ÷ 8 = 7.5 s, so the 19 dots of letter and word gap share the other 5.43 s: each gap dot stretches to 286 ms, a letter gap to 0.86 s and a word gap to 2.0 s.

How the decoder reads a sound

It first finds the tone: the sound is cut into slices of about a tenth of a second, the spectrum of each slice is measured, and the pitch that is strongest across all of them wins, so a tone that keeps coming back beats a single loud click. You can type the pitch yourself instead. The sound is then filtered to a band about 100 Hz wide around that pitch and its loudness is measured every 2 ms. A beep starts when the loudness climbs half-way from the background level to the tone level, and both levels keep adjusting, so a signal that slowly fades is followed. The length of a dot is worked out from the beeps themselves (short and long ones fall into two groups), so you do not need to set the speed, and the speed it found is shown.

What it cannot do

• Decoding needs one clean tone. Heavy noise, a signal that fades in and out, or two stations at once will garble letters or drop them.
• Hand-keyed Morse with very uneven timing decodes worse than machine-sent Morse: a long dot can read as a dash, and a short pause can join two letters.
• Very slow Farnsworth spacing inside a single word can come out as separate letters with spaces, because nothing tells it apart from word gaps.
• It reads sound only. Blinking lights in a video or a photo of dots and dashes are not decoded.
• Characters outside the ITU table (such as #, &, ! or accented letters other than É) have no Morse code. They are listed under the box and left out of the Morse, not guessed.
• Some phone browsers stop sound when the screen locks, and only some phones (most Android, no iPhone) can vibrate from a web page.

Privacy

Everything runs in this page. Your text, your files and the microphone sound are never sent anywhere, and nothing is stored. The page counts an anonymous page view and, the first time you play or decode, the fixed words morse-play or morse-decode, never what you typed or heard.

The Morse code table

From Recommendation ITU-R M.1677-1 (10/2009), Annex 1, Part I, fetched from itu.int when this page was built. To send an operating signal, type its name in angle brackets, e.g. <Wait>; letters in brackets such as <SK> are sent run together, as one signal.

Source: Recommendation ITU-R M.1677-1 (10/2009): International Morse code, Annex 1, Part I, fetched 2026-10-17. Spacing: dash 3 dots, gap inside a letter 1, between letters 3, between words 7.

Questions

Can a Morse code translator read audio?

Yes. Under Decode Morse from sound, open a recording (MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG and most formats your browser plays). The page finds the tone, times every beep and gap, and prints the text with the speed it measured. It works best on a clean single tone; the file never leaves your device.

How do I turn Morse code sound into text?

Tap Use microphone and hold the phone or laptop near the speaker. Text appears as the letters arrive, with the measured words per minute. The microphone is only switched on after your tap, and the sound is analysed in the page, not recorded or sent. Keep the room quiet: speech and music in the same pitch range confuse it.

How do I translate Morse code to English?

Type or paste the dots and dashes into the Morse code box: one space between letters, and a slash, or two or more spaces, between words. The English letters appear in the Text box as you type. A group that is not in the ITU table shows as � and is listed under the box. Long dashes (−, –), underscores and middle dots (·) are read too.

How are numbers written in Morse code?

Every figure is five signals long. 1 to 5 start with that many dots and fill up with dashes (1 is .----, 5 is .....); 6 to 9 start with dashes the same way (6 is -...., 9 is ----.), and 0 is five dashes. So 73 is --... ...--.

Can I decode Morse code from a video?

Often, yes: open the video file under Decode Morse from sound. Most browsers can read the sound track of MP4, MOV and WebM files, and the decoder only uses the sound. Blinking lights in a video are not read.