Code Utils

About Unicode Converter

Unicode is the universal character encoding standard that covers over 149,000 characters across 161 scripts — from Latin and Chinese to emoji, ancient scripts, and mathematical symbols. Every character has a unique code point (e.g., U+1F600 for 😀). Our Unicode Converter lets you instantly convert text to Unicode code points in multiple formats — Unicode escapes (\uXXXX), HTML entities (&#xXXXX;), CSS escapes, and more — and decode those escape sequences back to readable text. Essential for web developers handling internationalization, security researchers working with Unicode tricks, and developers debugging encoding issues.

Key Features

• Text to Unicode Escapes: Convert any text to U+XXXX code points, \uXXXX (JavaScript/Java/C), \UXXXXXXXX (Python), or \xXX hex escapes
• Unicode to Text: Decode any Unicode escape sequence back to its character
• HTML Entity Output: Generate &#xXXXX; numeric HTML entities and &#NNNNN; decimal entities
• Full Unicode Range: Supports all planes including emoji, CJK characters, and code points above U+FFFF (supplementary characters)
• Character Info: Shows the code point, block name, and category for each character
• Copy to Clipboard: One-click copy of the converted output
• Privacy First: 100% client-side — no data sent to any server

How to Use This Tool

Text to Unicode Code Points

1. Type or paste your text (including emoji, special characters, or any Unicode) into the input
2. Select the output format: U+XXXX, \uXXXX, HTML entity, or other options
3. The Unicode representation appears instantly in the output
4. Click Copy to copy the result

Decode Unicode Escapes to Text

1. Paste Unicode escape sequences (like \u0048\u0065\u006C\u006C\u006F) into the input
2. Click Decode or the appropriate decode button
3. The readable text appears in the output field

Unicode Format Reference

Format	Example (letter A)	Used In
Code Point	U+0041	Documentation, Unicode Standard
JS/Java escape	A	JavaScript, Java, C#, Swift
HTML entity (hex)	A	HTML, XML
HTML entity (dec)	A	HTML, XML
CSS escape	\41	CSS content property
Python long escape	U00000041	Python (for code points above U+FFFF)

Common Use Cases

Internationalization (i18n) and Web Development

When building websites or APIs that handle international text, Unicode escapes ensure that special characters display correctly regardless of the file encoding. Developers often escape non-ASCII characters in JavaScript string literals, JSON, and HTML to avoid encoding issues across different systems. Convert characters from languages like Arabic, Chinese, or Hindi to Unicode escapes to safely embed them in source files that might be processed by systems without proper UTF-8 support.

Security Research and Unicode Tricks

Unicode contains many "lookalike" characters — homoglyphs — that appear visually identical to common ASCII characters but have different code points. For example, Cyrillic 'а' (U+0430) looks identical to Latin 'a' (U+0061). Security researchers use Unicode converters to analyze potential phishing domains, detect homograph attacks in URLs, and identify zero-width characters (U+200B, U+FEFF) that can bypass text filters. Converting suspicious strings to code points reveals hidden characters invisible to the naked eye.

Debugging Encoding Issues

Encoding bugs — where text appears garbled, shows replacement characters (U+FFFD), or displays incorrectly — are common in software that processes text from multiple sources. Converting the problematic text to Unicode code points reveals exactly which characters are present, helping distinguish between a missing glyph (font issue), wrong encoding assumption (treating UTF-8 as Latin-1), or actual data corruption. This is the first debugging step for any mysterious character rendering problem.

Tips & Best Practices

• Supplementary characters and emoji: Characters above U+FFFF (like most emoji) require surrogate pairs in JavaScript's 16-bit string model — the \uXXXX format uses two escapes (surrogate pair), while \UXXXXXXXX or \u{XXXXX} represents them as single code points
• BOM character: U+FEFF (Byte Order Mark) is an invisible zero-width no-break space often inserted at the start of UTF-8 files by some editors. It can cause issues when files are processed programmatically. Unicode converters reveal its presence
• Normalization forms: The same visual character can sometimes be represented by different Unicode sequences (e.g., 'é' as U+00E9 or as U+0065 + U+0301). If your string comparison fails despite characters looking identical, check if normalization (NFC vs NFD) is needed
• RTL characters: Arabic and Hebrew text includes right-to-left markers and control characters (U+200F, U+202B) that affect display order. Converting these texts to code points reveals the embedded directional controls

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What Unicode formats does this tool support?

A: The converter supports JavaScript/Java/C# Unicode escapes (\uXXXX), Python-style long escapes (\UXXXXXXXX for code points above U+FFFF), HTML numeric entities (&#xXXXX; hex and &#NNNNN; decimal), CSS escapes, and standard U+XXXX notation. Input and output formats can be independently selected.

Q: What is a Unicode code point?

A: A code point is a unique number assigned to each character in the Unicode standard, written as U+ followed by 4–6 hexadecimal digits. For example, U+0041 is the Latin capital letter A, U+4E2D is the Chinese character 中, and U+1F600 is the grinning face emoji 😀. The Unicode standard currently defines code points from U+0000 to U+10FFFF, providing over 1.1 million possible characters.

Q: What is the difference between Unicode and UTF-8?

A: Unicode is the character standard that assigns unique code points to characters. UTF-8 is an encoding — a way to store those code points as bytes. UTF-8 uses 1–4 bytes per character, with ASCII characters (U+0000 to U+007F) stored in a single byte for backward compatibility. UTF-16 is another encoding that uses 2–4 bytes. This tool shows Unicode code points (the abstract numbers), not the specific byte sequences of any particular encoding.

Q: Can I convert emoji to Unicode?

A: Yes. Emoji are standard Unicode characters with code points in the supplementary planes (mostly U+1F300 and above). For example, 😀 is U+1F600. In JavaScript, emoji above U+FFFF are represented using surrogate pairs: \uD83D\uDE00 for 😀. This tool handles the full Unicode range including all emoji.

Q: Is my text private when using this tool?

A: Yes. All conversion happens entirely in your browser. No data is uploaded to any server or stored anywhere.