What is Base64 actually for?

Base64 turns arbitrary bytes into a safe set of ASCII characters so binary data can travel through text-only channels - data URIs, JSON fields, email attachments, HTTP headers, and JWT segments. It is an encoding, not encryption: anyone can decode it. It also makes data about a third larger, so it is for transport and embedding, not for hiding anything.

What is the URL-safe variant?

Standard Base64 uses + and / and = padding, which have special meaning in URLs. The URL-safe variant (base64url) replaces + with - and / with _ and usually drops the padding, so the result can sit in a query string or path segment unescaped. JWTs use base64url. Toggle it here to match whichever your system expects.

Does it handle emoji and non-ASCII text?

Yes. The naive btoa() breaks on characters outside Latin-1, so this tool encodes the text as UTF-8 bytes first and decodes back to UTF-8, which round-trips emoji, accents, and any Unicode correctly. Everything runs locally in your browser - nothing you type is uploaded.

Free tool · Runs in your browser · Nothing uploaded

Base64 encode & decode.

Encode text to Base64 or decode it back — UTF-8 safe (emoji and accents round-trip), with a URL-safe variant for query strings and JWTs. Two-way and live, all in your browser.

Text

URL-safe (base64url)

Base64

Bytes that travel through text

A lot of plumbing only moves text, but the thing you need to move is bytes — an image in a data URI, a binary blob in a JSON field, a signature in a JWT. Base64 bridges that by re-encoding bytes into a safe alphabet, and decoding them back on the other side. Just remember it is encoding, not security: a Base64 string is trivially readable, so never use it to protect anything — that is what real encryption is for.

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