Hash Generator

There is no algorithm menu and no button to press: every supported hash is calculated together and refreshes as you type.

1. Type or paste your text into the input box labelled Type or paste the text to hash. Spaces and line breaks count, so a trailing newline gives a completely different result.
2. Read the Hashes list on the right. It shows MD5 (128 bits), SHA-1 (160), SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 and CRC32 (32 bits), each as a hexadecimal string.
3. Tick Uppercase hex if the system you are matching prints digests in capitals. The value is identical; only the letter case changes.
4. Press Copy beside the row you need. Each algorithm has its own button, and the copy follows the uppercase setting.
5. Check the note under the list, which reports how many bytes were hashed locally.

The tool hashes text only. It has no file picker, so for a download use sha256sum on Linux and macOS or certutil -hashfile file SHA256 on Windows. The text is encoded as UTF-8 before hashing, which matches most command-line tools.

A hash function turns input of any length into a fixed-length fingerprint. The same bytes always give the same digest, and a one-character change gives an unrelated one. Try hello, which produces MD5 5d41402abc4b2a76b9719d911017c592, SHA-1 aaf4c61d... and CRC32 3610a686. Change it to Hello and the MD5 becomes 8b1a9953c4611296a827abf8c47804d7. Add a newline after hello and the SHA-256 starts 5891b5b5 instead of 2cf24dba.

The SHA digests come from the Web Crypto interface in your browser, which needs a secure context (https or localhost); MD5 and CRC32 are calculated by code on the page. If SHA values do not appear, the page says why.

A hash is not encryption. Encrypted data can be restored with a key, whereas a hash cannot be undone at all, which is how a site can check a password without keeping it, provided it uses a proper password scheme. CRC32 turns up inside ZIP and PNG files and Ethernet frames as a quick check for accidental errors.

Typical jobs are comparing a downloaded installer with the checksum on the vendor page, confirming that two configuration snippets are identical to the last byte, building a cache key, and checking that a pasted API payload matches the one a colleague signed. For each, hash both inputs the same way and compare the whole string, not just the first few characters. The output length never depends on the input: one letter and a whole novel both give 64 hex characters in SHA-256.

When your hash differs from the one in a tutorial or an API, the input is almost always the cause, not the algorithm.

• Newlines. echo hello | sha256sum hashes the word plus a newline. Use echo -n or printf to match what you typed here.
• Encoding. Accented letters hash differently in UTF-8 and in UTF-16, which some Windows tools use by default.
• Case. Uppercase and lowercase hex are the same number but different strings, so compare them after normalising.
• Empty input. The tool shows a prompt instead of the hash of an empty string.

Use SHA-256 or longer for integrity checks. CRC32 suits spotting accidental corruption only, since anyone can craft a matching value. Never store passwords as a bare hash of any kind: fast algorithms can be guessed billions of times a second, so use bcrypt, scrypt or Argon2 with a salt. The tool does not calculate HMAC, SHA-3 or salted hashes. To make a password worth hashing, use the strong password generator; for random identifiers see the UUID generator, and to inspect Base64 data use the Base64 encoder and decoder.