How long should I hold the key for a dash?
Hold the key three times as long as a dot for a dash. The tapper is more forgiving than that: anything held for two dot lengths or more is read as a dash, so you do not have to be exact to be understood.
Morse Code Tapper
This Morse code tapper turns your own taps into text. Hold the key for a dash, tap it for a dot, and pause to end a letter. It sounds like a practice oscillator, shows the timing as you send, and runs entirely in your browser with nothing to install.
Tap out a message
Decoded
Tap the key to start sending
- Signals
- 0
- Letters
- 0
- Your speed
- Not yet
A pattern with no letter shows as a question mark, so a mistimed letter stays visible instead of being dropped.
Sending is a different skill from reading, and it is the one a chart cannot teach you. The key decodes as you go, so a letter that comes out wrong tells you at once which part of your timing drifted.
Below are the timing rules the key follows, what the meter under it is showing, a practice routine to work through, and the mistakes that turn a correct message into gibberish.
Keep the alphabet chart open while you practise, or check what you sent against the translator.
How to tap out Morse code
- Press and hold the key. Click the key, touch it, or focus it and hold the space bar. You hear a tone for as long as you hold it down.
- Let go to place a dot or a dash. A short press is a dot and a long one is a dash. The bar under the key fills as you hold, and the mark on it is where a dot becomes a dash.
- Pause to end the letter. Stop for three dot lengths and the letter closes and decodes. Stop for seven and the word ends. Keep tapping and the message builds up as you go.
Nothing you tap is uploaded. The timing is measured and decoded in your own browser, which is why the tone starts the instant you press rather than after a round trip.
The timing rules the key follows
Morse has one unit of time, the length of a dot, and every other duration is a multiple of it. Change the speed slider and all five numbers below move together, which is why a message sent at 5 words per minute and one sent at 20 read the same.
- A dot is one unit of tone.
- A dash is three.
- Inside a letter, the silence between marks is one unit.
- Between letters, three units.
- Between words, seven units.
The key is deliberately more forgiving than an operator would be. It reads any hold of two units or more as a dash, rather than expecting exactly three, because the difference between a slow dot and a quick dash is the hardest thing to feel at the start and a tool that punishes you on the first try is one you close.
The gaps are not loosened, though, and that is on purpose. Cramped gaps are the single most common reason hand-sent Morse cannot be read, so the key holds you to the real three and seven units and shows you when you miss them.
What the bar under the key tells you
The bar fills for as long as you hold the key, and the notch across it is the boundary: release before it and you have sent a dot, release after it and you have sent a dash. The word on the key changes at the same moment.
Watch it for a minute and then stop watching it. The bar is there to calibrate your hand, not to be read while you send. Once a dash feels like a dash you will be sending faster than you can look.
Your speed under the key is measured from your shortest mark, since a dot is the briefest thing Morse contains. If it reads faster than the speed you set, your dots are too quick for your own gaps, which is exactly when letters start running together.
How to practise on a straight key
- Start slow enough to be right. Five to ten words per minute. Speed comes from rhythm, and rhythm cannot be built on letters that decode wrong.
- Count the gaps, not the marks. Most beginners get dots and dashes right and the silences wrong. Say dah di dah aloud with a real pause after the letter.
- Send E, T, A and N first. One and two marks each, they are the four most common letters in English, and they teach the dot and dash difference with the least to remember.
- Send your own name until it is automatic. A short familiar word is worth more than a long unfamiliar one, because you can hear immediately when it comes out wrong.
- Listen more than you look. Experienced operators recognise letters by sound, so close your eyes and send a letter you know before checking the screen.
When you want to hear it sent properly rather than send it yourself, the Morse code translator plays any message as beeps at a steady 15 words per minute. How to learn Morse code covers the method in full.
Why your message decodes as gibberish
Almost every bad decode on a key is a gap problem, not a mark problem. Morse has no other way to say where a letter ends, so three dots sent in a row with no pause is an unrecognised pattern rather than the letter S.
A question mark in the decoded line means exactly that: the pattern you sent has no letter. Press Delete last to take that letter off and send it again, rather than starting the whole message over.
If your letters keep merging, slow the speed down. The thresholds are all measured in dot lengths, so a lower speed gives you a longer pause to hit without changing anything about how you tap.
If instead every letter comes out as one dash too many, your dots are too long. Look at the bar and release earlier: the notch is not the middle of the bar, it sits two thirds of the way along.
More Morse code tools
- Morse code translator. Type text and read the code, or paste code and read the text.
- Morse code alphabet chart. Every letter, to check one you are about to send.
- Morse code audio translator. Decode a recording of someone else sending, or download your message as audio.
- Morse code image translator. Decode a picture of dots and dashes or a blinking light.
Frequently asked questions
Why did my letters run together into one?
Letters run together when the gaps between them are too short. A letter only ends after a silence three dot lengths long, so tapping straight on from one letter to the next makes a single long pattern with no meaning. Slow the speed down.
What does the question mark in the decoded text mean?
A question mark in the decoded text means you sent a pattern that is not a letter, usually one with an extra dot or a missing dash. It is shown rather than dropped so you can see which letter went wrong and press Delete last.
Can I use the space bar instead of the mouse?
You can use the space bar instead of the mouse. Tab to the key or click it once, then hold space down. Most people find a key easier to time than a mouse button, and it is closer to how a real straight key feels.
Is this the same as a real Morse key?
The tapper matches a real Morse key in timing and tone, but not in feel. What a straight key gives you that a screen cannot is the weight and the return spring, which is most of what makes a steady rhythm possible at speed.
What speed should I start at?
Start at five to ten words per minute. Pick the speed where your gaps come out right rather than the fastest you can manage, because a message sent slowly and cleanly is readable while a fast one with cramped gaps is not.
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