Unicode Inspector

How to use

1. Paste the text that is misbehaving — a password, a filename, a URL, a line from a CSV.
2. Read the summary: three different counts, because three different systems measure differently.
3. Look for anything marked invisible — that is usually what is breaking the comparison.
4. Copy the escape or entity form when you need to write the character into code.

Features

• Code point, escape sequence, HTML entity and URL encoding for every character.
• Zero-width spaces, non-breaking spaces and directional marks flagged.
• Cyrillic and Greek letters that impersonate Latin ones called out by name.
• Code points, UTF-16 units and UTF-8 bytes counted separately.
• Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you paste leaves the page.

Frequently asked questions

Why do I get three different character counts?

Because three different things are being counted. A person counts code points: 😀 is one character. JavaScript's `String.length` counts UTF-16 units, and gives 2. A database column limit and an HTTP header count UTF-8 bytes, and give 4. Text that fits one limit can fail another, which is why all three are shown.

What is a zero-width space doing in my text?

Usually a website put it there to allow a line break inside a long word, and it survived the copy. It has no width, so the text looks identical — but the string is not equal to the one without it, which is why a password fails, a lookup misses, or two rows that look the same refuse to match.

What does the confusable warning mean?

That the text mixes Latin letters with letters from another script that look identical. `аpple` with a Cyrillic а renders exactly like `apple` and is a different string entirely — the mechanism behind a whole class of phishing domains. The warning appears only when the surrounding text is Latin, because a Cyrillic letter in Cyrillic text is just a letter.

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