Morse Code Audio Decoder

How the Audio Decoder Works

1. Give it sound. Drag in an MP3, WAV, or OGG file — or click the microphone button and play the Morse near your device. The waveform appears with the detected tones marked.
2. It finds the timing. The decoder measures the beeps and silences to work out the sender's speed automatically, then maps the dot-dash patterns to letters. You can override the speed manually if auto-detect struggles.
3. Read the text. Decoded characters appear in real time, tinted by confidence so you can see at a glance which letters the decoder is sure about and which deserve a second look.

Supported Audio Formats

WAV is the best choice because it is uncompressed — every millisecond of tone and silence is preserved exactly. MP3 and OGG work too, but aggressive compression smears the sharp edges of beeps, and that costs accuracy.

What hurts more than the format: background music, talking over the signal, and re-recorded audio (holding your phone up to a speaker adds room echo and distortion). A clean, direct file will always beat a recording-of-a-recording. If you only have a video, extract or record its audio to a file rather than playing it through speakers whenever possible.

Why Audio Decoding Fails (and How to Fix It)

Most decoders fail silently and leave you staring at garbage. Here is what is actually going wrong, and the fix for each:

Background noise. Hiss, hum, music, or voices confuse the tone detector. *Fix:* use a cleaner segment of the recording — even 10 clear seconds beat 2 noisy minutes. Trim silence and music-only parts first.

Inconsistent timing. Hand-sent Morse speeds up, slows down, and stretches gaps. Machine-perfect decoders expect machine-perfect code. *Fix:* switch on the adaptive mode, which follows the sender's drifting timing instead of fighting it.

Speed mismatch. Code sent at 25 WPM decoded as if it were 12 WPM produces nonsense. *Fix:* set the WPM slider manually to roughly match what you hear, then let auto-detect fine-tune from there.

Weak or fading signal. Tones that swell and fade (common in shortwave recordings) get misread as extra gaps. *Fix:* pick the steadiest passage; normalize the volume if your editor allows it.

Tips for a Clean Decode

• Use the original file, not a re-recording of it through speakers.
• Trim leading/trailing silence and any sections with music or speech.
• Work with steady-tone passages; skip parts where the signal fades in and out.
• If auto-detect gives garbage, set the WPM manually — your ear is a good speed estimator.
• For hand-sent or sloppy code, use adaptive mode rather than the strict decoder.
• When only a few characters look wrong, fix them by hand instead of re-running the whole file — the confidence tinting shows you exactly where to look.

Decode Morse Code from YouTube or Streams

Two options. Easiest: play the video near your device's microphone and use live mic mode — fine for short, clear clips. Better: record the video's audio to a file (most systems can do this with built-in tools) and upload it. The file route avoids room echo entirely and decodes noticeably better. Either way, steady clear tones decode well; videos with background music or commentary over the beeps will struggle.

Prefer typing?

Use the main morse code translator to convert text both ways, or decode morse from photos and screenshots.

Frequently asked questions