Life & fun · September 6, 2020
Base32H, a human-friendly duotrigesimal number system
Base32H, a human-friendly duotrigesimal number system launched on September 6, 2020 with 87 votes, #478 of 3,898 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 6 years on.
In plain words
Base32H is a base-32 number system designed to be more human-friendly than standard binary or hexadecimal formats. It uses 32 distinct characters optimized for readability and ease of use. The system was launched in 2020 and targets developers and anyone working with data encoding who needs a more intuitive alternative to conventional numeral systems. Its main advantage is improved legibility when reading and writing encoded values.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
32 digits, picked for the right balance of legibility, audibility, and information density. 0 or O? 1 or I? 5 or S? Doesn't matter; they're equivalent in Base32H. All the digits can be found on your typical keyboard, and are totally safe for URLs, filenames, and anything else that might not like special characters. These traits make it an excellent choice for any situation where people need to reliably read numeric identifiers -- asset tags, product keys, public key fingerprints, user IDs, etc. -- and especially if that situation entails reading an identifier aloud to someone else. Three official / reference implementations and counting (all free software under the ISC License ), plus…from base32h.github.io
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