Unicode Converter

Unicode is the universal character encoding standard that assigns a unique number — called a code point — to every character in every writing system on Earth. Before Unicode, different languages and regions used incompatible character sets (ASCII for English, Shift-JIS for Japanese, ISO 8859 for European languages), making it impossible to reliably display text across different computers and software. Unicode solved this by creating a single unified system that now represents over 149,000 characters from 161 modern and historic scripts, plus emojis, mathematical symbols, and technical notation.

Each Unicode character is identified by a unique code point written as U+ followed by a hexadecimal number. For example the letter "A" is U+0041, the Chinese character "中" is U+4E2D, and the emoji "😊" is U+1F60A. This converter translates between readable text and the numeric code points in multiple standard formats — hexadecimal (U+xxxx), plain decimal integers, and HTML entities — so developers, designers, and anyone working with international text can quickly convert between representations.

Unicode code points can be expressed in several standard formats, each serving different use cases in programming and web development. This converter handles all four major representations:

The Text to Unicode mode converts any text into all four formats simultaneously. The reverse modes accept Unicode code points (U+0048), decimal numbers (72), or HTML entities (H) and convert them back to readable text.

This converter supports four modes of operation, selectable from the tab buttons at the top of the page:

1. Text to Unicode: Enter any text — letters, symbols, emojis, or mixed scripts — and get the code points in hexadecimal (U+xxxx), decimal integers, and HTML entity formats (both decimal and hex). Each character's code point is separated by a space for clarity.
2. Unicode to Text: Paste space-separated or comma-separated Unicode code points such as "U+0048 U+0065" or "\u0048 \u0065" and see the original text. The converter accepts both the U+ prefix format and raw hex values.
3. Decimal to Text: Enter space or comma-separated decimal code point values like "72 101 108 108 111" and convert back to text. This is useful when working with JavaScript charCodeAt() output or database-stored integer values.
4. HTML Entity to Text: Paste HTML entities like "Hel" and get the decoded text. Both decimal (A) and hexadecimal (A) entity formats are supported.

The common characters reference grid at the bottom of the page shows 12 frequently used Unicode symbols with their code points for quick lookup without typing.

Unicode extends far beyond the basic Latin alphabet. Some of the most frequently used Unicode characters in everyday digital communication include symbols like the heart (♥, U+2665), star (★, U+2605), check mark (✔, U+2714), and cross mark (✘, U+2718). These symbols appear in social media posts, user interfaces, and formatted documents — they are just regular text characters with code points that differ from standard alphanumeric characters.

Technical and mathematical symbols form another large segment of commonly used Unicode characters. The degree symbol (°, U+00B0), plus-minus sign (±, U+00B1), infinity symbol (∞, U+221E), and Greek letters like pi (π, U+03C0) are essential for scientific notation, engineering documents, and educational materials. Rather than using special markup or embedded images, these symbols can be included directly in text using their Unicode code points.

Copyright and trademark symbols — © (U+00A9), ® (U+00AE), and ™ (U+2122) — are frequently represented as HTML entities because they are not easily typed on standard keyboards. The HTML entity conversion mode makes it straightforward to switch between the visible symbol and the entity code format required for HTML source files.

Unicode handling varies across programming languages, and this converter bridges the gaps between them. In JavaScript, characters can be represented using String.fromCodePoint(65) from decimal values or escape sequences like \u0041 from hex. The charCodeAt() and codePointAt() methods do the reverse — extracting decimal code points from strings — exactly what this converter does in Text to Unicode mode.

In Python, the ord('A') function returns the decimal code point (65), and chr(65) converts back. The \u and \U escape sequences in Python string literals accept 4-digit and 8-digit hexadecimal values respectively. Java uses \u0041 escape sequences and the Character.codePointAt() method for extraction. By providing decimal, hexadecimal, and HTML entity output simultaneously, this converter matches whichever format your programming language or framework requires.

In HTML and web development, Unicode characters can be included either directly when the document is saved as UTF-8, or through HTML entities for environments where direct encoding is not reliable. Numeric character references like A (decimal) and A (hex) work in all HTML versions and are immune to encoding issues. The HTML entity conversion mode produces both formats, making it a reliable reference for embedding special characters in web pages, email templates, and XML documents.