Paste any Base64 string and get the decoded text. Auto-detects URL-safe variant (uses - and _ instead of + and /). UTF-8 safe so non-Latin scripts (Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, emoji) come through correctly. Flags errors clearly when input isn't valid Base64 (wrong character set, wrong length, etc.).
When to use this
Use when: decoding the payload of a JWT (the middle section is Base64), reading API responses that include base64-encoded blobs, debugging Basic Auth headers, decoding email message bodies in MIME format, reading data URIs to see the actual content.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does decoded text look like garbage?
Two reasons: (1) The input wasn't actually Base64-encoded text - it might be Base64-encoded binary (an image, a PDF, a ZIP). Decoded binary won't be readable as text. (2) The encoding charset is non-UTF-8 (e.g. Windows-1252, ISO-8859-1) and our decoder assumes UTF-8 by default.
Can I decode partial Base64 strings?
Base64 requires the input to be a multiple of 4 chars (or padded to be). A partial string will fail to decode. If you have a known-truncated string, pad it with = signs to reach a multiple of 4 - the result may be truncated text but at least decodable.
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