Binary to Text: How Computers Store Your Data
Published April 2025 · 5 min read
Every letter, number, and emoji you see on screen is stored as binary — just 0s and 1s. Here's how it works.
ASCII: The Basics
Each character gets a number (0-127), stored as 8 bits (1 byte):
| Character | ASCII | Binary |
|---|---|---|
| A | 65 | 01000001 |
| B | 66 | 01000010 |
| a | 97 | 01100001 |
| 0 | 48 | 00110000 |
| Space | 32 | 00100000 |
Example: "Hi" in Binary
H = 01001000
i = 01101001
"Hi" = 01001000 01101001Unicode: Beyond English
ASCII only covers English. Unicode supports every language, emoji, and symbol — over 150,000 characters. UTF-8 encoding uses 1-4 bytes per character.
How Much Data?
- 1 character = 1 byte = 8 bits
- 1 KB = 1,024 characters (about a paragraph)
- 1 MB = ~1 million characters (a novel)
- 1 GB = ~1 billion characters
Try It
Convert any text to binary with our Text to Binary Converter.