Morse Code Decoder
Play Morse code to your microphone, upload a recording, or type or paste dots and dashes: the decoder turns it into text. It works out the speed by itself, from slow hand sending to fast CW.
Save
Pause for a letter gap, pause longer for a word gap. On a computer the space bar works too. Timing follows the speed in Settings.
Decode Morse from sound or a picture
Play a Morse tone near the microphone, or open a recording. The decoder finds the pitch and the speed by itself and works best on a clean tone between 300 and 1500 Hz. An image works when the dots and dashes are solid shapes on a plain background, like a screenshot or a printed card. Nothing is uploaded: everything is processed on your device.
Set overall speed lower than letter speed for Farnsworth timing: letters stay quick, the gaps get longer. This is how most people learn.
Morse code chart
Tap any character to hear it.
Letters
Numbers
Punctuation (ITU)
In common use, not ITU
National letters, not ITU
Procedural signals (prosigns)
Sent as one signal with no gap between the letters. Type them in angle brackets, like <SK>.
Three ways to decode
- Microphone: press Start listening and hold the phone or laptop near the sound. Letters appear as they are heard, and earlier letters are corrected once the decoder has learned the speed.
- Audio or video file: choose a recording (for example a voice memo or a video with Morse in it). The whole file is read at once, which is more accurate than live listening.
- Typed code: paste dots and dashes into the box above. Spaces separate letters, and a slash or a double space separates words.
How it works
The decoder listens for the loudest steady tone, then measures how long each beep and each silence lasts. From those lengths it learns the dot length of the sender, tells dots from dashes, and finds where letters and words end. Because it learns as it goes, the first letter or two can be wrong and are corrected a moment later.
Getting a clean decode
- One sender at a time: two tones at once cannot be separated.
- Keep background noise down, or use a file rather than the microphone.
- A clear tone decodes best. A telegraph sounder (clicks) or tapping is harder to read than a beep.
- If the text is right but runs together, the gaps in the recording are too short: that is the sender's spacing, not the decoder.
Tested, and private
We test the audio decoder against recordings at 5 to 40 WPM, with Farnsworth spacing and heavy noise; the results are on the About page. Everything runs in your browser: your microphone and files are never uploaded.
More Morse code tools
Decode
More