Morse code translator with sound and alphabet

Translate and play Morse code instantly

Type text or paste Morse code into the box: the translator detects which way to translate and shows the result as you type, letter by letter. You can also:

• play the message as audio, from 5 to 30 words per minute, with the exact timing of International Morse code;
• copy the result, with a space between letters and a slash between words, the format most translators use;
• browse the full Morse alphabet and click any character to hear it, a handy way to learn the sounds.

To decode Morse, dots and dashes can be typed as periods, hyphens, underscores or the · and − symbols, and words can be separated by a slash, two spaces or a new line. It’s free, with no sign-up, and everything runs in your browser.

The Morse code alphabet

Each letter is a sequence of dots (short signals) and dashes (long signals). The most common letters get the shortest codes: E is a single dot and T a single dash.

É is the only accented letter in the international standard. Other accented letters are sent without their accent: à becomes A and ñ becomes N.

Numbers and punctuation in Morse code

All ten digits are five signals long and follow a simple pattern: from 1 to 5, each digit adds a dot at the start and drops a dash at the end; from 6 to 0, the same thing happens with dashes.

Punctuation marks have their own codes, usually six signals long: period .-.-.-, comma --..--, question mark ..--.., apostrophe .----., slash -..-. and at sign .--.-., added in 2004 for email addresses. The exclamation point -.-.--, ampersand, semicolon, underscore and dollar sign are not part of the international standard, but they are widely used.

Morse code timing: dots, dashes and gaps

In Morse code, silence matters as much as sound. Everything is measured in units:

• a dot lasts 1 unit and a dash 3 units;
• the gap between signals within a letter is 1 unit;
• the gap between letters is 3 units, and between words 7 units.

Speed is measured in words per minute (WPM), using the standard word PARIS, which takes exactly 50 units including the space after it. One unit therefore lasts 1.2 seconds divided by the speed: at 20 WPM, a dot lasts 60 milliseconds. Beginners often listen at 10 to 15 WPM, while experienced operators copy 25 WPM and more.

SOS, “I love you” and other messages in Morse

• SOS: ... --- ..., three dots, three dashes, three dots. Adopted in Berlin in 1906 as the international distress signal, it is sent as one continuous sequence, with no gaps between the letters. It doesn’t stand for “Save Our Souls”: it was chosen because it is easy to send and to recognize.
• I love you: .. / .-.. --- ...- . / -.-- --- ..-, and hello: .... . .-.. .-.. ---.
• The first public message sent by Samuel Morse, on May 24, 1844, from Washington to Baltimore: “What hath God wrought”, a line from the Bible.

A short history of Morse code

The code was created in the late 1830s for the electric telegraph developed by Samuel Morse and his partner Alfred Vail. The original American Morse code, long used on US railroads and telegraph lines, had spaces inside some letters and dashes of different lengths. A simpler version, adopted in Paris in 1865 and now known as International Morse code, became the standard for radio.

Morse code carried telegrams, ship-to-shore messages and military traffic for more than a century. In 1966, Jeremiah Denton, a US Navy pilot held as a prisoner of war, famously blinked the word TORTURE in Morse during a filmed interview. Ships stopped relying on Morse in 1999, when satellite distress systems took over, and in 2007 the US dropped the Morse test for amateur radio licenses. Ham radio operators still use it and call it CW, aviation radio beacons identify themselves in Morse, and it works anywhere a simple light or sound signal has to get through: a flashlight, a whistle or blinking eyes.

How to learn Morse code

• Learn by ear, not by sight: operators recognize the rhythm of each letter (“di-dah” for A) instead of counting dots and dashes.
• Start with a few letters and add a new one once you get almost all of them right: that’s the Koch method. E, T, I, M, A and N are the easiest.
• Listen at real speed, at least 15 WPM, and stretch the gaps between letters at first if you need to (Farnsworth timing), so you don’t get into the habit of counting.
• Practice little and often, about 15 minutes a day. The Alphabet tab plays each character with a single click.

Some phone keyboards, like Gboard, also offer a Morse code input mode.

More free tools

• the binary translator turns text into 0s and 1s, and back;
• the Roman numeral converter writes a number or a date in Roman numerals;
• the random name picker draws names, teams or a winner;
• the coin flipper tosses a virtual coin, once or 10,000 times.