BASE64(1)

💖 BASE64(1) 💖

okay bestie, so like — this is the base64 manual page from the uutils coreutils world, and it's genuinely one of the most useful little gremlins in your terminal. No cap. Let's get into it. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

base64 — encode/decode data and print to standard output. With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

The data are encoded as described for the base64 alphabet in RFC 3548. When decoding, the input may contain newlines in addition to the bytes of the formal base64 alphabet. Use --ignore-garbage to attempt to recover from any other non-alphabet bytes in the encoded stream.

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

base64 [OPTION]... [FILE]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Literally what it says on the tin: encode/decode data and print to standard output. With no FILE, or when FILE is -, it reads standard input. (Yes, - is the "just read stdin pls" signal. She's flexible like that. 💅)

The data are encoded as described for the base64 alphabet in RFC 3548 — that's the standard, don't @ me.

When decoding, the input may contain newlines in addition to the bytes of the formal base64 alphabet, so it's not gonna trip over a stray linebreak. Use --ignore-garbage to attempt to recover from any other non-alphabet bytes in the encoded stream — that's your little rescue mission flag for messy input. 🫶

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -d, --decode — decode data. (turns the gibberish back into real stuff, iconic)
• -i, --ignore-garbage — when decoding, ignore non-alphabetic characters. (it's giving "I don't see it, therefore it's not there" energy 💀)
• -w, --wrap <COLS> — wrap encoded lines after COLS character (default 76, 0 to disable wrapping). The default is 76 bestie, and 0 means no wrapping at all, we're letting it run free 🌈
• -h, --help — Print help
• -V, --version — Print version

And then there's [file] — the optional file argument, sitting there being optional. 👑

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💜 VERSION 💜

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

Encode a file:

base64 path/to/file

Wrap encoded output at a specific width (0 disables wrapping):

base64 [-w|--wrap] 0|76|... path/to/file

Decode a file:

base64 [-d|--decode] path/to/file

Encode from stdin:

command | base64

Decode from stdin:

command | base64 [-d|--decode]

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project https://tldr.sh under the CC BY 4.0 License. Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail. (not me hyping up a project that's still cooking 😭 but fr fr, some examples might fail, that's just the tea)

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okay that's the whole page bestie, you ate that 💅✨

sign-off time 🎀 — this one's from uutils coreutils version 0.12.0, dated 2026-09-25, and it's the BASE64(1) page from the General Commands Manual. go forth and encode, my main character 👑🦋