Morse code translator

Last checked October 31, 2026 by the TextEditor.com team

How to use the Morse code translator

Type or paste text in the box. The dots and dashes change while you type. Letters with no Morse sign show as a highlighted question mark.

To read Morse, press "Morse to text" and paste the dots and dashes. Put one space between letters and a slash between words. The slash is not part of Morse. It is a common way to write the long pause between words. If you paste dots and dashes while the tool is set to text, it offers to switch for you.

Press Play to hear the code. Letter speed sets how fast each letter is sent, in words per minute (WPM). Gap speed adds extra time between letters and words, so you have time to think. A light can blink along, and on many Android phones the phone can vibrate too.

How Morse code works: dots, dashes and timing

Morse code is built from one unit of time. A dot is one unit of sound and a dash is three. The silence inside a letter is one unit. Between letters it is three units, and between words it is seven.

Speed is measured with the word "PARIS". With the gap after it, PARIS is exactly 50 units long. At 20 WPM you could send it 20 times in a minute. One unit lasts 1.2 seconds divided by the speed, so at 20 WPM a dot is 0.06 seconds.

Common letters got the shortest signals. E is a single dot and T is a single dash. Rare letters like Q (--.-) are longer. The international version is set by the ITU in Recommendation ITU-R M.1677-1, which this tool follows.

Learners often use Farnsworth spacing. Each letter is sent at full speed, but the gaps are longer. You learn the sound of each letter as a whole instead of counting dots. Set Gap speed lower than Letter speed to try it.

Morse code chart

Letters, digits and the most used signs. Digits are always five signals long, so they are easy to tell apart.

SOS and other famous Morse signals

SOS is the distress signal. It is written ...---... and sent as one run with no gaps between the letters, so it is really one sign. The letters do not stand for words like "save our souls". The pattern was picked because it is easy to send and hard to miss.

SOS became the international distress signal through a radio treaty signed in Berlin in 1906. It came into force in 1908. Much earlier, on 24 May 1844, Samuel Morse sent "What hath God wrought" over a test line from Washington to Baltimore. The words come from the Bible. Ships stopped using Morse for distress calls in 1999, when the satellite and digital radio alerts of the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) took over.

Morse makes a fun secret code for a game or an escape room. For an extra twist, write the message backwards before you turn it into Morse.

Learn Morse code with a quick quiz

Learn each letter by its sound, not from a chart. If you count dots in your head, you get stuck at slow speeds. Play a letter, then pick what you heard. The quiz uses the speeds you set in the player above.

Want the same word in Braille, flags or hand signs? The symbol alphabet translator shows all five at once.