Decode Base64 back to an image

A Base64 string is an image hiding inside text, and you run into them more than you would expect. Four situations account for almost every visit to this page.

You are reading someone else's markup or CSS. Inline images in page source and background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,...) rules in a stylesheet are images you cannot right-click and save, because there is no file to save. Pasting the string here gives you the file.

An API handed you an image inside JSON. Avatars, generated QR codes, signature captures, document thumbnails and chart exports are routinely returned as a Base64 field instead of a URL. When you are debugging that response, you need to see the picture, not the string.

You are working in code and something looks wrong. An image that renders as a broken icon, a canvas export that comes out blank, a thumbnail that is the wrong one entirely. Decoding the string is the fastest way to find out whether the data or the display is at fault.

Someone sent you a string instead of a file. Logs, bug reports and chat messages all lose attachments and keep text. The string survives; this turns it back into the image.

It is the exact reverse of the Image to Base64 tool, and the two are often used in the same sitting: encode to embed, decode to check what you embedded.

One thing worth stating plainly, because it is the reason to use a page like this instead of an online decoder that posts your string to a server: the decode happens in your browser. The string is never transmitted, so pasting a data URI that came out of a private application, an internal API response or a customer bug report does not put that image on anyone else's machine. If you want to check that claim rather than take it on faith, our image privacy page shows you how to watch the network yourself.