Morse Code Decoder
Decode and Decipher Morse Code to Text
Two ways to decode: paste the dots and dashes you already have, or upload a recording and let the audio decoder read the tones for you.
Paste Morse code to decode it to text
Decoded text appears here as you type.
Separate letters with a space and words with a slash — e.g. .... . .-.. .-.. --- / .-- --- .-. .-.. -.. reads HELLO WORLD. Dots may be typed as · or •, dashes as – or —; the decoder normalises them.
Decode Morse code audio
Choose your input
Text you can copy from anywhere goes into the paste box. A recording — a radio capture, a phone memo, a film clip — goes into the audio decoder.
Keep the spacing intact
Morse has no meaning without gaps: 1 unit inside a letter, 3 between letters, 7 between words. Collapsing them is the single most common reason a decode returns garbage.
Check the question marks
A ? in the output means one symbol sequence is not a valid character. Nine times out of ten it is a letter that got merged with its neighbour.
Morse code decipher: what the decoder cannot fix
A decoder maps symbols to characters. It cannot recover information that was never in the signal. Three limits are worth knowing before you blame the tool.
- Missing letter gaps. If the sender ran everything together, several characters become one unknown symbol sequence. Nothing can split them reliably.
- Ambiguous words. The same letters can be split differently — ·−·· ·−··−− could be read more than one way. Morse has no word-level checksum.
- A Morse code reader trained on human sending, not machine sending. Hand-keyed CW varies in speed and weight; the audio decoder is more reliable on machine-generated tones.
Common Morse code patterns to recognize
A handful of messages show up again and again in jewelry, games, and on the air. Knowing them by sight makes every decode faster.
Decode Morse code from light, taps, or video
Morse does not care what carries it — a torch, a car headlight, a signal lamp in a film, a tapped rhythm on a wall. The decoding job is always the same: sort the short marks from the long ones, watch the gaps to find letter boundaries, then read it back.
For a flashing signal you have on video, step through it frame by frame, write down a dot for each short flash and a dash for each long one, mark the gaps, then paste the result into the paste box above. For taps, the same transcription works by ear.
Morse code puzzle solver tips for games and escape rooms
- Start from what the puzzle gives you. Escape-room clues usually hide a word you already expect — a colour, a name, a number. Encode your guess in the translator and compare it against the dots and dashes in front of you.
- Count the symbols first. Each letter is at most 4 marks long; if a group is longer, it contains several letters or a number.
- Try moving one gap at a time. When a group returns ?, shift a space left or right and re-run — the failed group plus its neighbours usually resolve together.
- Watch for prosigns. Puzzle designers love SOS because it is sent as one unbroken group — if ...---... appears with no gaps, read it as SOS first.
Frequently asked questions
What does a Morse code decoder do?
It converts Morse back into readable text. You can paste dots and dashes directly, or upload a recording and let the audio decoder detect the tones and reconstruct the message automatically.
How do I decode Morse code without separators?
Honestly, you often can't — a run like ...---... has many valid readings. If you know part of the message, use it: type the letters you expect, compare their patterns, and insert spaces where the groups split cleanly. For famous prosigns such as SOS, paste ... --- ... with spaces and the decoder handles the rest.
What does ... --- ... decode to?
Three dots (S), three dashes (O), three dots again (S) — the international distress signal SOS. It is technically a prosign sent as one unbroken group, which is why ...---... without spaces is the famous ambiguous string.
Why does my decode show question marks?
A ? marks a dot-dash group that matches nothing in the International Morse table. The cause is almost always spacing: a letter merged with its neighbour, or a stray character pasted from a PDF or chart. Fix the gaps around the failing group and it usually resolves.
Can I decode Morse code from audio, an image, or a video?
Audio: yes — upload a WAV or MP3 above and the tone decoder reads it. Images: yes — the image translator extracts dots and dashes from photos and screenshots. Video: transcribe the flashes frame by frame into dots and dashes, then paste them here.
Is decoding the same as translating Morse code?
Practically yes — both convert Morse to text. “Decoder” usually implies one-way reading of an unknown signal, while a translator handles both directions. This page does both: paste Morse to read it, or type text in the translator to produce it.
About the Morse code decoder
Both modes run entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded to a server. The text decoder maps each dot-dash group against the International Morse table; the audio decoder analyses the waveform, detects tone on/off boundaries, and reconstructs the symbols from their duration.
The tool is developed and maintained by the MorseTool team. Its conversion logic has been manually checked; if you spot an encoding error, please report it through the contact page.
Want to learn Morse code from scratch? Visit the Learn Morse Code page.