Morse Code Translator (with Audio)

Morse code represents each letter and digit as a pattern of short dots and long dashes. This translator converts text to International Morse and back, and plays the result as a real tone so you can hear it. Everything happens in your browser.

How to use this tool

1. Type text to encode, or paste dots and dashes to decode (spaces between letters, / or a wide gap between words).
2. Leave the direction on Auto-detect, or force one way.
3. Set the character speed in words per minute; lower the overall speed for Farnsworth spacing when learning.
4. Press play on the audio, or download the WAV file.

Formula

A dot is one unit. A dash is three units. Gaps are one unit (between dots and dashes), three units (between letters) and seven units (between words). One unit lasts 1200 ÷ WPM milliseconds.

At 20 WPM one unit is 60 ms. The reference word "PARIS" plus its word space is exactly 50 units, so at 20 WPM it takes 50 × 60 ms = 3.0 seconds — which is why "words per minute" is defined using PARIS. With Farnsworth timing the 19 units of spacing stretch to (60c − 37.2s) ÷ (s·c) seconds, where c is the character speed and s the overall speed.

Example

The word "SOS" encodes to ... --- ...: S is three dots, O is three dashes. That is 27 units of sound and gaps, about 1.6 seconds at 20 WPM, or 2.0 seconds counting the word space that follows.