TL;DR bytes -> str: In []: b'\x90\x90\x90\x90'.decode('latin-1') Out[]: '\x90\x90\x90\x90' str -> bytes: In []: '\x90\x90\x90\x90'.encode('latin-1') Out[]: b'\x90\x90\x90\x90' But Why Tho Sometimes when you're programming or you're playing CTFs [https://majorleaguecyber.org/