Unicode Converter
Convert to/from Unicode
Convert to/from Unicode Runs locally in your browser
Input containing \\u escapes is decoded to text. Anything else is encoded into escapes.
About the
The Unicode Converter translates text into \u escape sequences and back again, detecting the direction from what you paste. It is the tool for those moments when a log line, a translation file or an API response comes back as \u0048\u0065\u006c\u006c\u006f and you need to read it, or when you need to put a character into a place that will only accept ASCII. Every character is converted, so the round trip is lossless in both directions.
Where people use the
- Reading a log line or a response full of escape sequences.
- Putting a non-ASCII character into a file that must stay ASCII.
- Checking what a translation file actually contains.
- Escaping a character before pasting it into a JSON string.
How to use the
- 1
Paste a value
Either escaped text such as \u0048\u0065\u006c\u006c\u006f, or ordinary text you want escaped.
- 2
Run it
Input containing escape sequences is decoded to text. Anything else is encoded into escapes.
- 3
Check the direction
If nothing changes, the input was read as the wrong kind. Add an escape to force decoding, or remove them to force encoding.
- 4
Copy the result
The output is plain text, ready to paste back into your file or terminal.
Tips and best practices
- Characters outside the basic plane become a surrogate pair; that is normal.
- Use URL encoding instead if the target is a URL rather than a string.
- The round trip is lossless, so converting twice returns the original.
Frequently asked questions
How does it know which way to convert?
It checks whether the input looks like escape sequences. If it does, the input is decoded; otherwise it is encoded.
Does it handle emoji and characters beyond the basic plane?
Each UTF-16 code unit is escaped separately, so characters outside the basic plane come out as a surrogate pair, which is how JavaScript and JSON represent them.
Is this the same as URL encoding?
No. This produces \u escapes, which are a JavaScript and JSON convention. Percent encoding for URLs is a different scheme.
Why does my decoded text look wrong?
Because the escapes were produced from a different encoding. These escapes represent Unicode code units, not raw bytes.
Is anything uploaded?
No. Conversion happens in your browser, so logs and response payloads stay on your device.