How to Encrypt and Decrypt Text with AES Online

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Sometimes you need to share sensitive text — a password, a private note, a key — through a channel that isn't fully secure, like email or chat. AES encryption scrambles the text so it's unreadable without the password used to encrypt it, and unscrambles it just as easily for whoever has that password.

When you need AES encryption

• Sharing a sensitive note or credential through an insecure channel
• Storing sensitive text in a way that requires a password to read
• Protecting a value before pasting it somewhere you don't fully trust
• Decrypting text someone else encrypted and shared with you, along with the password

How to encrypt text with AES, step by step

1. Open AES Encrypt/Decrypt.
2. Paste the text you want to protect.
3. Enter a password to encrypt it with.
4. Copy the encrypted output to share.
5. To decrypt, paste the encrypted text and the same password into the decrypt side.

Tips for using AES encryption safely

• Share the password through a different channel than the encrypted text itself — sending both together defeats the purpose.
• Use a strong, unique password for the encryption — see the Password Generator if you need one.
• Keep a record of the password. Encrypted text is unrecoverable without the exact password used to encrypt it.

Common questions

Can I recover the text if I forget the password? No — AES encryption is designed so the text can't be recovered without the exact password. There's no backdoor or reset option.

Is this the same as hashing? No — hashing (like SHA256) is one-way and can't be reversed. AES encryption is two-way: encrypt with a password, decrypt with the same password to get the original text back.

How strong is the encryption? AES is a widely trusted, industry-standard encryption algorithm — the security of your data depends mainly on choosing a strong, unique password.

Need to protect a piece of text? Encrypt your text with AES for free →