SHA-256 Hash Generator

What the 64 hex characters are

Generate hash encodes the field with a UTF-8 text encoder and passes those bytes to crypto.subtle.digest with the algorithm name SHA-256. The 32 resulting bytes are written as lowercase hex, two characters each, concatenated. abc is the three-byte message 61 62 63 and the panel is ba7816bf8f01cfea414140de5dae2223b00361a396177a9cb410ff61f20015ad. A trailing newline is a different message. If you paste abc and then a line break, the panel will not match the line above.

The empty field encodes to zero bytes. Its digest is e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855. That click still counts as success. The panel is never shortened, never grouped with spaces, and never printed in capitals. hello world, with the space, is b94d27b9934d3e08a52e52d7da7dabfac484efe37a5380ee9088f7ace2efcde9. There is no second panel.

The single text field

The control is one textarea labeled Input text and one button labeled Generate hash. There is no mode for a file, no encoding menu, and no toggle that reprints the same digest in Base64 or in uppercase. If a publisher printed the hex in capitals, compare case-insensitively yourself. This page will not flip the case for you. If a publisher printed a Base64 digest, this page will not convert the hex you just made.

A checksum that needs a secret is not this construction. The HMAC generator takes a key and can use SHA-256 as the inner hash. Pasting the same text here, with no key, will not match an HMAC. A 40-character hex string is the width of the SHA-1 generator. A 128-character hex string is the width of the SHA-512 generator. A 32-character hex string is the width of the MD5 generator. When you only have the hex and not the name, the hash identifier sorts candidates by length and alphabet. It does not compute this digest.

Jobs for a text digest

Use the panel when the thing you can paste is text: a password you are only fingerprinting for a demo, a commit message, a short fixture, or the letters abc from a test table. The digest is deterministic. Generate hash on abc twice and the panel stays on the same 64 characters. Whitespace counts. A space at the end is part of the UTF-8 bytes.

Do not use the panel as a password store. The function is fast and unsalted. A file download, an installer, or a tarball is also the wrong input, because this page has nowhere to drop a file and it will not read a filename you type as if it were the file. The neighboring hash pages that accept a file are separate tools. This one hashes the characters in the box.

What a second click sees

The panel keeps the previous digest until Generate hash runs again. Editing Input text, even deleting it, leaves the old hex in place. If you need the empty-message digest, clear the field and press the button. Copy output copies the panel, so a stale panel is what you will copy if you forget the second click. Before the first click the panel is empty and Copy output has nothing to copy.

There is no status sentence for success or failure. The Web Crypto call is not given a branch that prints an error for ordinary text, including an empty field and a field of non-Latin characters. é and 你 are UTF-8 bytes in the message, not a rejection. The page does not offer a compare line, so a mismatch against a published digest is something you see by looking, not a badge the page sets.

Rules and limitations

Input is the text field, encoded as UTF-8, including the empty field. Output is SHA-256 as 64 lowercase hex characters. The same bytes always produce the same hex.

There is no file input, no uppercase or Base64 rendering, no expected-digest comparison, and no download. The panel updates only when Generate hash is pressed.

Common problems

If abc does not match the digest in the example, the field has an extra newline, space, or a different character. The example is exactly those three letters.

If you needed a file checksum or an HMAC, this page cannot compute it. A key or a filename typed into the box is hashed as text.

Frequently asked questions

About this tool

Maintained by Toolbench. For large or deeply nested files, split the input into smaller batches and verify representative results before using them in an import or application. Report reproducible problems through Contact.