My Base64 decodes to gibberish. Why?

It is probably binary — an image, a protobuf, a compressed blob — rather than text. Switch to the hex view, or download it as a file.

Base64 Decoder

Decode Base64 back to text, with a hex view for binary data.

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About this tool

Base64 turns arbitrary bytes into 64 printable characters so they can travel through channels built for text — email headers, JSON strings, URLs. Decoding reverses it. There is no key and no secrecy involved: anyone holding the string can read it, which is why Base64 is an encoding rather than a form of protection.

Limitations

If the payload is not valid UTF-8 text it is shown as a hex dump instead of being mangled into replacement characters.

Questions

My Base64 decodes to gibberish. Why?: It is probably binary — an image, a protobuf, a compressed blob — rather than text. Switch to the hex view, or download it as a file.

Privacy

This page does its work in your browser. What you paste is processed by JavaScript running on your own device and is never sent to a DevToolery server — there is no server that could receive it. The page itself is a static file delivered by a CDN. See exactly what is stored.