What is a Hex Editor?

A hex editor is a program which allows you to edit compiled programs and binary data-files.

These editors are called hex editors because they most often present data in hexadecimal format. Hexadecimal is used because it is easier for most humans than working in binary. In addition, hexadecimal is frequently useful because computers tend to work with 8-bit bytes of information and because ASCII is an 8-bit code.

Some hex editors are also able to edit raw disk partitions and other file system structures.

Hex editors can sometimes be used to remove copy protection. They can also sometimes be used to cheat at computer games by editing saved games and character files.

Hex Editor Operating System

frhed (FRee Hex EDitor) Windows

Hackman Hex Editor Windows

Freeware Hex Editor XVI32 Windows

HHD Hex Editor Windows

Heme Unix

Shed (Simple Hex Editor) Unix

BIEW (Binary vIEW) DOS, Windows, OS/2, Linux

DataWorkshop Windows, Linux, MacOS

HexStar Windows

Hack Windows

Catch22 Hex Edit Windows

HexEdit Windows

Hex Editor	Operating System
frhed (FRee Hex EDitor)	Windows
Hackman Hex Editor	Windows
Freeware Hex Editor XVI32	Windows
HHD Hex Editor	Windows
Heme	Unix
Shed (Simple Hex Editor)	Unix
BIEW (Binary vIEW)	DOS, Windows, OS/2, Linux
DataWorkshop	Windows, Linux, MacOS
HexStar	Windows
Hack	Windows
Catch22 Hex Edit	Windows
HexEdit	Windows

Hex Editor Product Descriptions

frhed (FRee Hex EDitor)

Features of the frhed hex editor include:

Open Source! Distributed under GNU General Public License
Native 32 bit Windows application: long filenames supported, editable file size limited only by available system memory.
Small program size (ca. 100K), loads fast.
Cut, copy & paste binary values.
Syntax for describing byte, word, longword, float and double binary values in text form to use with find and paste functions.
Directly enter hexadecimal values or text in main window (overwrite or insert).
Compare files.
Find/Replace any combination of text and binary values.
Bit manipulation.
Export as hexdump to file or clipboard.
Automatically adjust bytes displayed per hexdump line to window width, or set bytes per line manually.
Choose font size, character set (ANSI or OEM), colors of text and background.
Intel or Motorola binary format.
Can be used as "Send to"-Target.
Set bookmarks to easily access offsets in the file.
Load files partially.
Drag and Drop.
Apply binary templates for structured information.
Hard disk sector read access.
Cryptography support.
C++ source code is included (written using Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0, does not use MFC).
No registration fee required.

Hackman Hex Editor

Hackman Hex Editor 8.0 is a powerful multi-module hex editor. It comes with cryptography capabilities, decoding with ready and self-made algorithms and a fully-featured editor. You can edit virtually any file, disk, ZIP drive, Ram Drive, Smart Media, Compact Flash I & II, IBM Microdrive or Physical RAM with the ease of a word processor.

Features of the Hackman hex editor include:

Edit any binary file
Disk Editor
RAM Editor
Unlimited undo/redo with undo/redo lists
Clipboard control: cut, copy, paste, paste special, clear clipboard
Highly sophisticated find and replace
Unlimited watches and bookmarks
Numerous conversion modes, including Java, C++, VB, ASCII, text and more
Patch Maker
MS-DOS Executable Maker
Merger/Splitter
Checksums: CRC16/32, MD5, SHA1 and more
Cryptographic capabilities (Skipjack, NSA, RCA algorithms)
Live update to constantly keep your copy up-to-date
Support for macros
Command bar
Numerous Plugins and External Tools
Highly customizable: reconfigure toolbar, shortcuts, menus, anything!
Supports column grouping
Available in many languages!
Unparallel extension capabilities: build your own plugins easily
Help books online

Note: The free "lite" version of the Hackman Hex Editor is limited to 200kb files and cannot edit physical or logical disks or system memory.

Freeware Hex Editor XVI32

XVI32 is a freeware hex editor running under Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. The name XVI32 is derived from XVI, the roman notation for the number 16.

Features of the Freeware Hex Editor XVI32 include:

Data inspector to view decoded numbers
Has built-in script interpreter
Easily works with huge files
XVI32 allows to edit files up to 2 GB (enough virtual memory provided, of course)
For your convenience, XVI32 stores settings and last used search strings etc. in XVI32.INI file
Progress indication in percent for most operations
You can abort nearly all operations (reading/writing files, search, replace, print...)
Display of both text (ASCII/ANSI) and hexadecimal representation
Two synchronous cursors in text and hex area
Fully resizeable window (change number of rows and columns)
Font and font size adjustable
Overwrite or insert characters
Insert text or hex string n times
Switch byte offset (address) of first byte between 0 or 1 to examine also record structure of plain text files
Search text or hex string, e.g. find "this text" or find "0D 0A"
Simplified search for Unicode Latin (UTF-16) strings
Search optionally with joker (wildcard) char that will match any character, e.g. find "A.C" or "00 2E 2E 00" where "." = "2E" (user-defined) stands for any character
Fast searching algorithm (Quicksearch) for both search directions (down/up)
Count occurences of text or hex string
Replace text or hex string, e.g. replace "0D 0A" by "0A" or replace "0D 0A" by text "EOL"
Extremely fast "replace all" mode (if needed, additional memory is allocated beforehead, not at every single replacing operation)
Auto-fill feature to copy bytes from current address into input field for hex string using right arrow key
Character conversion using self-defined character table
Easy converting of text to hex string in dialogs (e.g. "abc" -> "61 62 63")
Decoding and encoding of 1, 2, 4, and 8 byte integers or 4/8 byte floats in 2 possible byte orders
Bit manipulation (view or set bits)
Open file in Read Only Mode (e.g. if opened by another application or to avoid unintentional modifications)
Insert file contents into file
Write block to file
Copy, move or delete block
Clipboard support
Goto address (absolute or relative up/down)
Up to 9 named bookmarks
Enter jump width and jump up/down (useful for files with fixed record length)
Patch BORLAND PASCAL 7.0 EXE files for execution on processors > 200 MHz
Printing with preview or print to file
Simplified search for Unicode Latin (UTF-16) strings
Wheel mouse support
Command "Reload" to open current file again
Easily access most recently used files
No setup programm needed, doesn't write any data to registry
And last, but not least: XVI32 is free!

HHD Hex Editor

Hex Editor is a binary file editor. Hex Editor is a powerful hex editor, whose advanced features will strongly simplify the editing process.

Features of the HHD Hex Editor include:

Loads files up to 2 GB in a couple of seconds!
Multi-document, multi-window interface. You can open as many files as you want, as well as open as many windows per file as you want. Later you can use Copy(Cut)/Paste operations between opened files.
Autorestore feature that helps you restore opened files after system failure.
Powerful Find feature.
Drag&drop and other shell integration features.
Goto (or jump) feature that allows you to move to any absolute or relative location in the file.
Fill feature that can fill tens of Megabytes with undo support!
Full Undo support. (The only limit is your hard disk free space).
Expanding (inserting several parts) files, deleting parts of files etc. with full undo support.

Heme Hex Editor

Heme is a fast and portable console hex editor for unix systems. It has undo support (number of undo operations is only limited by available memory), ability to fill a range of addresses with the specified byte, ability to search for a single byte or character string.

Shed (Simple Hex Editor)

Shed (Simple Hex Editor) is an easy to use hex editor written for unix/linux using ncurses, with a friendly pico-style interface.

Features of the shed Hex Editor include:

Displays each byte as ascii, hex, decimal, octal and binary.
Allows changes to be input in all of the above
Simple Pico-style interface
Search
Dump to file
Small memory requirments because file is not loaded into memory
Can handle files up to 2Gb

BIEW (Binary vIEW)

BIEW is a multiplatform portable viewer of binary files with built-in editor in binary, hexadecimal and disassembler modes. It uses native Intel syntax for disassembly. Highlight Pentium 4/K7-Athlon disassembler, russian codepages converter, full preview of formats - MZ, NE, PE, NLM, coff32 partial - a.out, elf, LE, LX, PharLap; code navigator and more.

DataWorkshop

DataWorkshop is an editor to view and modify binary data. The editor provides different views which can be used to edit, analyze and export the binary data. A simple hex view can be used to simulate a standard hex editor but more complex dynamic views are possible to comfortable edit binary structure like executables or captured network traffic. The editor provides powerful search and diff functionality and user defined transformations to modify the binary data. Views can be filtered using the XPath query language (e.g. selecting several IP packets in a network traffic capture file) Views can be exported as in various formats for further processing. This can be used to convert old binary formats into modern xml tagged data.

Mulitplatform (Windows, Linux, MacOS)
User defined view definitions which are compiled into complex data views
Data view can can be exported as xml
Data view can be queried using XPath syntax to generate a new data view (e.g. selecting several IP packages according to their flags)
Configurable data encodings used to edit and view data (e.g Hex, Decimal, IEEE 754 Reals, USAscii, EBCDIC, TimeInMillis etc.)
Configurable data transformation (e.g. Rot13 Encoder / Decoder)
Diff tool with bit granularity
Find and replace with bit granularity
Data clipboard for cut, copy and paste
Undo/Redo
XML based storage for persistent data
Data conversion between different formats (e.g little endian <-> big endian, hexdump <-> binary data)
Read and write from sockets

HexStar

HexStar is a full-featured hex editor for Windows NT/2000.

Hack

Hack is a public domain Win32 hex editor with REXX scripting. Hack is an hex editor designed to run under Win32 operating systems (which includes Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT and, probably, Windows ME, Windows 98 and Windows 95).

With Hack, you can:

Edit files directly in hex or ASCII mode
Disassemble anything in x86 assembly language
Write your own REXX script to suit your needs

Catch22 Hex Edit

Catch22 Hex Edit is a hex editor for Microsoft Windows. Hex Edit allows the user to view and edit any type of file, no matter what format it is saved in. With a maximum file size limit of 4Gb, Hex Edit can cut, copy, paste, insert and delete any amount of data with no decrease in performance with larger files. With unlimited multi-level undo and redo capability, no matter how large the file, Hex Edit brings a new level of control over file editing.

Hex Edit is fully Drag and Drop enabled, and allows files to be dropped into any position in the current document, as well as dragging data from the Hex Edit window to create individual files in Windows Explorer. Data can also be drag-and-dropped between separate instances of Hex Edit, as well as within the current document.

Integrated with Hex Edit is a new way to view and edit files: TypeView allows the creation of user-defined structured views comprised of basic data types (byte, word, dword, Ascii and Hex strings). By using TypeView, you can examine file headers or structured portions of a file in an intuitive manner.

Also included with Hex Edit is a built-in version of Supercalc, the small but powerful expression calculator. Doing away with the clumsiness of rows of buttons associated with traditional calculators, with Supercalc you can type the exact expression you want to evaluate. Supercalc can be docked neatly at the bottom of the Hex Edit main window to provide a convenient helping hand.

Features of Catch22 Hex Edit include:

Maximum file size of 4Gb (32bit version).
Insert, Overwrite and Read-only modes.
Unlimited multi-level Undo and Redo commands.
Full clipboard support, including support for all clipboard formats.
Drag and Drop data between instances of Hex Edit or to and from Explorer as files.
Sophisticated multi-data type search and replace facility.
Jump to any position within the file.
Simple but powerful super-slick user interface.
Export data to a file or the clipboard as Text, HTML, C source code or Assembler include data.
Reverse portions of a file.
Insert or delete portions of a file, with no speed decrease even on multi-gigabyte file sizes.
Quick save mode for simple file edits (Overwrite mode only).
Modify the file time stamps of any file.
Includes a powerful type viewer which facilitates viewing and editing portions of a file via user-defined structured types.
Also includes a built-in version of SuperCalc.

HexEdit

Feature Summary

Easy to use interface familiar to Windows users
Unlimited undo (incl. cursor moves), undo changes
Window tabs to see/jump to any open window
Highlighter mode to show important bytes
Built-in calculator, integrated with macros
Autofit, hex/decimal addresses, OVR/INS, RO etc
Drag and drop files onto the main window
Background searches (using low priority thread)
Background search progress/count in status bar
Configure all colours, save in colour schemes
Ability to display IBM/OEM (MSDOS) graphics
Easily increase/decrease font and font size
Printer margins, headers/footers etc & print preview
Complete clipboard support: binary, ASCII, etc
Easy to use hex/text searches with the "Find Tool"
Address tools for fast jumps
Compare files or parts of the same file
Open multiple files from Open dialog/cmd line
Full EBCDIC support (inc. cut/paste etc)
Keystroke macros with error levels
Continually updated properties display (tab dialog)
Monitor/edit over 60 file/byte/numeric/date values
8 floating point formats, 15 date formats
8/16/32/64 bit integers (signed/unsigned) in decimal
Customize toolbars, keyboard, context menus ...
Customizable filter (Files of type) list for all file dialogs
Hex text, Motorola-S & Intel-hex import/export
CRC-32, CRC-CCITT, & checksum of selection
Advanced templates handle almost any type of file
Templates can have variable length and optional parts
Included templates: GIF, SWF, BMP, DBF, JPG etc
Recent files dialog stores info on up to 20000 files
Use C-like expressions in jump tools and templates
Unlimited bookmarks associated with a file+address
Advanced find (& replace options) including:
- scope: to mark, to EOF, whole file, all open files
- bookmark all, replace all, alignment, wildcards/bitmask
Edit files of more than 4 Gbytes (>2^32)