Unicode Character Inspector

Paste text to see every character: code point (U+XXXX), Unicode name, general category, block, script, UTF-8 bytes and UTF-16 code units. Invisible characters such as zero-width spaces, control characters and combining marks are made visible. Look up a character by code point (U+1F600, 0x1F600) and copy its HTML entity or JavaScript, Python and CSS escape. Uses Unicode 17.0 data in your browser.

About this tool

What is the Unicode Character Inspector?

A tool that shows what a piece of text is really made of. Every character is listed with its code point, official Unicode name and properties, so you can find hidden characters (zero-width spaces, non-breaking spaces, BOM, direction marks), tell look-alike characters apart (Latin A and Cyrillic А, the hyphen and the minus sign), or get the escape sequence you need in code.

How to use

  1. Choose Text and type or paste text, or choose Code points and enter code points such as U+1F600 U+0041.
  2. Each visible character (grapheme cluster) is shown as a group. When it is made of more than one code point, for example é written as e + accent or a family emoji, the group header shows the character and each code point is listed under it.
  3. Click a row to open the details: HTML entities, JavaScript, Python and CSS escapes, URL encoding and name aliases. Press the copy button next to a value to copy it.

What is shown

ColumnExampleMeaning
Char😀The character. Invisible ones are shown as a label (ZWSP, NBSP, VS16), control characters as control pictures (␊), and combining marks on a dotted circle (◌́)
Code pointU+1F600The Unicode number in hexadecimal
NameGRINNING FACEThe official character name. Characters without a name show a label such as <control-0000> or <private-use-E000>
CategorySo (Other Symbol)General Category, such as letter, mark, number, punctuation, symbol, separator or control
Block / ScriptEmoticons / CommonThe block the code point belongs to, and the writing system (Latin, Han, Hiragana, …)
UTF-8 / UTF-16F0 9F 98 80 / D83D DE00The bytes in UTF-8 and the 16-bit code units in UTF-16 (JavaScript strings use UTF-16)

The details add: HTML numeric references (&#x1F600; and &#128512;) and named references (&amp;, &copy;) where HTML defines one, JavaScript (\u{1F600} and 😀), Python (\U0001f600 and \N{GRINNING FACE}), CSS (\1F600) and URL encoding (%F0%9F%98%80).

Code point input

In Code points mode you can mix these notations, separated by spaces or commas: U+1F600, 1F600, 0x1F600, &#x1F600;, &#128512;, \u{1F600}, 😀 (a surrogate pair is joined into one code point) and \U0001F600.

Limits

To stay fast, only the first 2,000 code points of long text are listed. The note above the table tells you how many there are in total.

FAQ

How do I find a zero-width space or other hidden character?

Paste the text. Hidden characters get their own row with a label such as ZWSP (U+200B), ZWJ (U+200D), NBSP (U+00A0), BOM/ZWNBSP (U+FEFF) or LRM (U+200E), so you can see where they are.

Why does one character have several code points?

Some characters are built from a base character and combining marks, or from several emoji joined with a zero-width joiner (U+200D). Flags are two regional indicator letters. They are shown as one group because they are displayed as one character.

Why is a name missing for some characters?

Control characters, private-use characters, surrogates and unassigned code points have no name in Unicode. For control characters the tool shows the name alias (for example NULL, LINE FEED) instead.

Which Unicode version is used?

Unicode 17.0.0. Newer characters may show as unassigned, and your font may not have a glyph for every character even when the name is known.

Is my text sent to a server?

No. The Unicode data is downloaded with the tool and everything runs in your browser.

Data sources

🔡 Unicode Escape / Unescape
Convert text to \uXXXX Unicode escape sequences, or turn \uXXXX and \u{1F600} escapes back into readable characters. Handles emoji and surrogate pairs.
🔤 Unicode Normalization
Normalize text to Unicode NFC, NFD, NFKC or NFKD as you type. Convert full-width letters and half-width katakana, and unify accented characters.
※ Special Characters & Symbols
Browse and copy special characters and symbols: arrows, stars and shapes, ※ † § and other marks, math and currency symbols, units like ㎡ and ℃, Greek letters, circled numbers ①, Roman numerals Ⅻ, fractions, box drawing and Japanese symbols such as 〒 〆 々.
🧬 Emoji Splitter
Split emoji and text into visible characters (graphemes) and Unicode code points. See ZWJ parts, skin tones, variation selectors, flags and keycaps.
🔤 Character Counter
Count characters, words, lines, paragraphs, sentences and bytes (UTF-8 and Shift_JIS) as you type. Emoji and combining marks count as one character, and Japanese words are counted too.
🈂️ Text Encoding Converter
Detect a text file's encoding, BOM and line endings, and convert it between UTF-8, UTF-16, Shift_JIS, EUC-JP and JIS. Also shows bytes and fixes mojibake.