Hex Converter
Convert hexadecimal to decimal, binary, and octal. Encode/decode text to hex bytes, view hex color swatches, generate hex dumps, and add hex numbers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Hexadecimal (hex) is a base-16 number system using digits 0–9 and letters A–F. It is widely used in computing because each hex digit represents exactly 4 binary bits (a nibble), making it a compact representation of binary data. Two hex digits represent one byte (8 bits).
Hex is more human-readable than binary but still maps cleanly to binary. Memory addresses, color codes (#RGB), file permissions, byte values in protocols, and machine code are all commonly expressed in hex. It is much easier to read 0xFF than 11111111.
A hex dump shows data as three columns: an address offset (which byte position), the hex values of each byte (usually 16 per row), and the ASCII representation (printable characters shown, non-printable shown as a dot). It is used to inspect raw binary files or network packets.
0xFF = 255 in decimal. FF in hex is 15×16 + 15 = 255. It represents a byte with all 8 bits set to 1 (11111111 in binary). 0xFF is frequently used as a bitmask in low-level programming to isolate the lowest 8 bits of an integer.
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