Hand it a file, get a Base64 string back, done. efeBase64 turns documents, images, audio, and video into Base64 text and pastes the result straight onto your Clipboard, then reverses the whole thing on demand. It works the same on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
What it actually does
Base64 is the encoding that lets binary data ride along inside plain text, which is why you see it embedded in CSS, email attachments, and vCard contact icons. This shortcut wraps the encode and decode steps into one menu so you don’t have to chain raw actions yourself. Pick a file or some text, and it spits out the Base64 string. Feed it a string, and it rebuilds the original.
A couple of touches make it less fiddly than rolling your own. It validates whatever is sitting on the Clipboard before you decode, marking the content as empty, valid, or invalid, and graying out the decode option when there’s nothing usable. A regex pass also strips stray line breaks during decode, so a string copied from a wrapped text file still resolves cleanly.
Getting it set up
- Tap Add Shortcut on this page to open it in the Shortcuts app.
- Approve the import when iOS asks.
- Run it once so iOS can request the permissions it needs for files and Clipboard.
Running the shortcut
You’ve got two ways in. Launch it from the Shortcuts app or your Home Screen and the menu asks whether you want to encode or decode, then lets you choose a file or pull text from the Clipboard. Or skip the menu entirely: from any app, hit the Share Sheet, scroll to the Action List, and tap efeBase64 to convert the selected file on the spot. On Mac, the same shortcut shows up under Quick Actions in Finder.
Where the output lands depends on one toggle. With Save Data on, results drop into a predefined folder you can reach from the shortcut menu, each named with a 20-character string so nothing collides. Leave it off and the result goes to the Clipboard for an immediate paste. Text extraction covers the formats you’d expect to decode from, including .txt, .json, .csv, .xml, .html, .md, .plist, and .rtf.
Quick answers
Why is my decoded file bigger than I expected?
That’s Base64 itself, not the shortcut. Encoding inflates data by roughly 33% because it represents every three bytes as four text characters. The original file is fine once you decode it back.
The decode button is grayed out — what gives?
It checks your Clipboard first. If the Clipboard is empty or holds something that isn’t a valid Base64 string, decode stays disabled and the icon shows gray. Copy a real Base64 string, or just pick a .txt file manually to pull the text from instead.
Do I need any other apps for this?
No extra downloads. iOS has handled Base64 encoding inside Shortcuts since iOS 13, and this shortcut builds the menu, validation, and storage on top of those built-in actions.
