File to binary viewer

Photos, songs, games and documents look very different, but inside the computer they are all the same thing: long rows of 1s and 0s. Open a file to see for yourself.

No file? Try a sample:

Your file never leaves your device. It is opened right here in your browser.

Everything is binary

A computer can only store two states: on and off, written as 1 and 0. Each one is a bit. Eight bits make a byte, and a file is just a list of bytes.

What the bytes mean depends on the type of file. In a text file, each byte is the ASCII code of a letter, so you can read the message under the bits. In a picture, the bytes describe the colours of the dots (pixels). The computer uses the file’s type to know how to read them.

Things to try

  • Open hello.txt. Can you find the letters under the bits?
  • Open smiley.png. Look for the letters PNG near the start. Every PNG picture begins this way.
  • Open a photo from your phone. How many bits is it?

More free ICT tools