What is Base64?
Base64 is a binary-to-text encoding scheme that represents arbitrary binary data
as a string of 64 printable ASCII characters (A-Z, a-z,
0-9, +, /, with = used for padding).
It's widely used when you need to transport binary data through systems that only
handle text — email attachments (MIME), Data URIs in HTML/CSS, JSON payloads,
URL parameters, and configuration files.
URL-safe Base64
The standard Base64 alphabet uses + and /, which both have
special meaning in URLs and filenames. The URL-safe variant (RFC 4648 §5) replaces
them with - and _ respectively. Padding (=) is
also often stripped. Check the URL-safe box above to use this variant.
Is Base64 encryption?
No. Base64 is an encoding, not encryption — anyone can decode it trivially. Never use Base64 to "hide" secrets. If you need confidentiality, use actual cryptography (AES, ChaCha20, etc.).