Unicode Converter Online – Free Character Encoder & Decoder
Convert any text to Unicode code points, HTML entities, or escape sequences instantly. Base64 Shuttle processes everything in your browser for fast, private results.
What Is Unicode?
Unicode is the universal character encoding standard that enables computers to consistently represent and manipulate text from any writing system in the world. It assigns a unique number, called a code point, to every character—whether it is a Latin letter, a Chinese ideograph, a mathematical symbol, or an emoji. The Unicode Standard currently defines over 149,000 characters covering more than 150 scripts.
Before Unicode, computers used competing encoding systems like ASCII, ISO 8859, and Shift-JIS, each covering only a limited set of characters. This caused compatibility problems when text was exchanged between systems using different encodings. Unicode solved this by providing a single, universal set of characters that all systems can use.
Unicode code points are written in the format U+XXXX, where XXXX is a hexadecimal number. The Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) contains code points from U+0000 to U+FFFF and covers most commonly used characters. Supplementary planes (U+10000 and above) contain additional scripts, historic writing systems, and emojis.
How to Convert Text to Unicode
- Open the converter: Navigate to the Unicode Converter page on Base64 Shuttle. The tool is ready to use immediately.
- Enter your text: Type or paste the text containing the characters you want to convert. The converter accepts any Unicode character, including emojis and symbols.
- Choose the output format:Select whether you want Unicode code points (U+XXXX), HTML entities (&#XXXX;), JavaScript escapes (\\uXXXX), or another format.
- Click Convert: The tool transforms each character into its Unicode representation in the selected format. The result appears instantly.
- Copy the output: Click the Copy button to save the converted string. Use it in your source code, HTML documents, or configuration files.
Key Features
- Multiple output formats: Convert to Unicode code points, HTML numeric entities, JavaScript escape sequences, CSS escapes, and more.
- Full Unicode support: Handles all Unicode planes, including supplementary characters like emojis, historic scripts, and mathematical symbols.
- Client-side processing: All conversion happens in your browser. Your text is never sent to any server.
- Bidirectional conversion: Convert text to Unicode escapes or paste Unicode escapes to decode them back to readable text.
- Real-time output: The converter produces results instantly as you type or paste, with no delay or loading time.
- UTF-8 byte display: Optionally view the UTF-8 byte representation of each character alongside its code point.
- Free and unlimited: Convert as much text as you want with no usage limits, watermarks, or hidden costs.
Common Use Cases for Unicode Conversion
JavaScript and web development: JavaScript uses \\uXXXX escape sequences to represent Unicode characters in string literals. This is essential when you need to include characters that cannot be typed on your keyboard or when your source file encoding does not support certain characters.
HTML entity encoding:HTML documents use numeric character references (&#XXXX;) to display special characters. When you need to show a copyright symbol, a non-breaking space, or a character from another script, converting it to an HTML entity ensures it displays correctly in all browsers.
Internationalization (i18n): When building applications that support multiple languages, you often need to work with Unicode escape sequences in resource files, configuration files, and translation strings. The converter helps you prepare these strings correctly.
Emoji integration: Emojis are Unicode characters in the supplementary planes. Converting emojis to their code point values helps you include them programmatically in applications, especially when the development environment does not support emoji input directly.
Data analysis and debugging: When debugging text processing issues, knowing the exact Unicode code points of characters helps identify invisible characters, homoglyphs (characters that look similar but have different code points), and encoding errors.
Unicode Encoding Formats Explained
Unicode code points (U+XXXX):The standard notation for Unicode characters. U+0041 represents "A", U+4E2D represents the Chinese character "中", and U+1F600 represents the grinning face emoji. This format is used in documentation, specifications, and academic contexts.
HTML entities (&#XXXX;):Numeric character references used in HTML. The decimal code point is placed between &# and ;. For example, € displays the euro sign (€). You can also use hexadecimal with &#x prefix: €.
JavaScript escapes (\\uXXXX): The \\u prefix followed by four hex digits in JavaScript string literals. For characters above U+FFFF, JavaScript uses surrogate pairs: \\uD83D\\uDE00 for the grinning face emoji.
CSS escapes (\\XXXX):CSS uses a backslash followed by the hex code point. For example, \\0041 represents "A". A space or hex digit terminator is needed after the escape sequence.