Online Morse code key
This online Morse code key turns your keyboard into a straight key or a pair of iambic paddles. Tap Space for a dot, hold it for a dash, and pause to finish a character; choose paddles in Settings and hold one key for dits, another for dahs. On a phone, use the on-screen key. Everything you send is decoded live and played as real CW audio, and nothing is saved to a server.
Next: S dot dot dot
How to send Morse code with a keyboard
The Space bar is the key. Press it and the sidetone sounds for as long as you hold it: let go quickly for a dot, hold it past 200 ms for a dash. Then stop. When the key has been quiet long enough, the elements you sent are read as one character and printed on the tape. Stay quiet a little longer and the word ends too. On a phone or tablet, press and hold the brass key on the screen instead; it behaves exactly the same.
To send the letter S, tap three times (···) and wait. To send the word, send each letter the same way, with a pause between them. If a character finishes before you meant it to, press Finish yourself next time, or give the key more time below it.
Why the key waits for you
How patient the key is has nothing to do with speed. At 15 WPM a character ends after 240 ms of silence, which is right for a practised operator and hopeless for a beginner who means to send S and, after a moment of doubt, has sent E three times. So the telegraph starts on Learning: a character ends after 1.6 seconds of quiet and a word after 3.5. Switch to Manual and nothing finishes until you say so. The fuse between the tape and the key shows how long you have left.
What to send first
Pick a target above the key and the tape checks it letter by letter as you send. A few words every operator knows are worth trying:
- SOS (··· −−− ···), the distress signal, which also works sent as one unbroken character.
- CQ (−·−· −−·−), a call to any station listening.
- 73 (−−··· ···−−), best regards, the usual sign-off.
- 88 (−−−·· −−−··), love and kisses.
The text you key is never uploaded, and the telegram you can share at the end is drawn on your own screen. If anonymous counters are on in Settings, the site counts that a word was sent, and which of the four words above turned up; nothing more.
Common questions
- Can I use a real Morse key or paddle?
- Yes. Settings has a Key type: Straight, Iambic A and Iambic B. The straight key is timed by hand. With iambic paddles, hold [ for dits and ] for dahs, or use the two on-screen paddles on a touchscreen, and Swap paddles reverses them for a left hand. A physical key or paddle works through an adapter that turns it into key presses, as long as each paddle sends a different key: bind those keys in Settings.
- What is the difference between iambic mode A and mode B?
- Both send dits or dahs for as long as you hold a paddle, timed exactly from your speed: a dit is one unit long and a dah three, each followed by one unit of silence. Squeeze both paddles and they alternate. The difference is what happens when you let go of a squeeze: mode A finishes the element it is sending and stops, while mode B sends one more, the opposite element. Both remember a paddle tapped during an element and send it next.