File to SHA-256.

SHA-256 is a cryptographic hash function from the SHA-2 family, published by NIST in 2001. It turns any input, from an empty string to a multi-gigabyte file, into a fixed 256-bit digest, written as 64 hexadecimal characters. The same input always gives the same digest, and a one-bit change gives an unrelated one.

Yes. There is no known way to find two inputs with the same SHA-256 digest, or to find an input for a given digest, faster than brute force, which would take longer than the age of the universe. It carries 128-bit collision resistance, the level TLS, code signing and Bitcoin rely on.

No. A hash is one-way by design: the digest holds no information that leads back to the input. What people call "decrypting" a hash is guessing inputs and comparing digests, which works only for short or common inputs such as passwords, and that is why passwords need a slow, salted hash instead.

Not on its own. SHA-256 is fast, which is the opposite of what password storage needs: an attacker can try billions of guesses a second. Use bcrypt, scrypt or Argon2id, which are deliberately slow and salted. SHA-256 is right for integrity checks, signatures and content addressing.

SHA-1 (160 bits) is broken: researchers produced two different PDFs with the same digest in 2017, and browsers and Git have moved away from it. MD5 (128 bits) fell earlier and collisions can be made in seconds. Both are fine as a quick checksum against accidental corruption, and wrong for anything an attacker could touch.

An HMAC is a hash keyed by a secret: HMAC-SHA-256 mixes the key into the computation so only someone who knows the key can produce or check the value. It is how webhooks, JWT HS256 tokens and API request signing prove a message came from the right party and was not altered.

Nothing leaves your browser. The file is read on your machine and hashed there, by the browser's Web Crypto API or a WebAssembly build of SHA-256 loaded on first use; the page makes no request with its bytes. You can load the page, go offline and keep hashing.

Drop the file onto the pane or choose it with the button. It is read into memory and hashed at once, with no size steps and no upload progress because there is no upload. Files up to 1 GB work; a 100 MB file takes well under a second on SHA-256.

Paste the digest the publisher gave you into the Verify field, in hex of either case, with or without spaces, colons or a 0x prefix, or in Base64. The tool says whether it matches the file you dropped. A match means the bytes are exactly the ones that were published.

Hex by default, 64 characters; Base64 and Base64url are one click away and re-encode the same 32 bytes. The download button saves a line in the `digest filename` form that sha256sum-style tools read.

No. The "File to SHA-256" tool is free and opens without a sign-in, an account or an install.

Nothing. The "File to SHA-256" tool holds your input in the page's memory, so closing or reloading the tab clears it, and it saves nothing in this browser.

The toolbar switches to SHA-1, SHA-384, and SHA-512 without leaving the page. Each one reads the same input, so you can compare digests side by side.

SHA-256 runs on the browser's own Web Crypto API, so there is nothing to download and it is the fastest path.

Yes: the SHA-256 hash generator page has the same algorithms and options and opens on the text box. This page opens on the file pane.

Closest to the "File to SHA-256" tool: SHA-256 hash generator, Double SHA-256 hash generator, SHA3-256 hash generator, BLAKE3 hash generator. Each opens on its own page, free and in the browser.

The "File to SHA-256" tool is one of 64 in its group. The group's page, /tools/hash, lists them all.

The tool is free. Its interface is built from shadcn.io's own components (Button, Input, Slider and the rest of the registry under /ui), which come in React, Vue, Svelte and Solid. Pro adds the blocks and templates for the product around it.