What is hexadecimal encoding?
Hexadecimal (“hex”) is a base-16 number system using the digits 0–9 and letters a–f. Each byte of data is represented by exactly two hex characters. Developers use hex to display raw bytes in a compact, readable way — for example in hashes, color codes, memory dumps, and binary file inspection.
Example
The text Hello encodes to 48 65 6c 6c 6f (or 48656c6c6f without spaces). Each pair maps to one character’s byte value: H = 0x48, e = 0x65, and so on.
UTF-8 support
This tool encodes text as UTF-8 bytes, so emoji and non-English characters are handled correctly. A single emoji may become four hex bytes because it takes multiple bytes in UTF-8.
Limitations
- Hex is an encoding, not encryption — anyone can decode it. For confidentiality use real encryption.
- Decoding needs an even number of hex digits. Odd-length input is invalid.
- Only the characters
0–9anda–f(plus optional spaces) are valid for decoding.
How to fix common problems
- “Invalid hex”: remove any
0xprefixes, commas, or non-hex characters, and make sure the digit count is even. - Garbled decode output: the bytes may not be UTF-8 text (they could be binary data).
Privacy: All conversion happens in your browser. Your input is never uploaded.