Encode or Decode base64 from the Command Line

If you have ever needed to quickly decode or encode base64, Linux has a command line utility called base64 that works great. I’ll show you how it works!

To encode text to base64, use the following syntax:

$ echo -n 'codediary.net rocks' | base64
Y29kZWRpYXJ5Lm5ldCByb2Nrcw==

To decode, use base64 -d. To decode base64, use a syntax like the following:

$ echo -n Y29kZWRpYXJ5Lm5ldCByb2Nrcw== | base64 -d
codediary.net rocks

Note: if on OS X, use capital D:

echo -nY29kZWRpYXJ5Lm5ldCByb2Nrcw== | base64 -D