Unicode Character Lookup (Inspector)

When two strings look the same but do not match, or a file shows odd boxes, you need to see the characters themselves. This inspector breaks text into code points and shows each one’s name, block, general category and script, its UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings, and ready-to-paste escapes for HTML, JavaScript, Python, CSS and URLs. It also flags invisible characters, bidirectional controls and words that mix Latin with Cyrillic or Greek look-alikes.

How to use this tool

1. Paste text, or type codes such as U+1F600, 0x41 or ☺.
2. Leave the mode on Automatic, or force text or code reading.
3. For one character, read the full detail; for several, use the table.
4. Check the warnings for hidden or deceptive characters.

Formula

UTF-8 uses 1–4 bytes: U+0000–007F → 1, U+0080–07FF → 2, U+0800–FFFF → 3, above U+FFFF → 4. UTF-16 uses one 16-bit unit up to U+FFFF and a surrogate pair above: high = D800 + ((cp − 10000) >> 10), low = DC00 + ((cp − 10000) & 3FF).

Hangul syllable names are computed from their jamo (한 = H + A + N → HANGUL SYLLABLE HAN), and CJK ideographs are named by their code point. Category and script come from the browser’s own Unicode tables, so very new characters may show as unassigned in an older browser.

Example

The Korean syllable 한 is U+D55C, block Hangul Syllables, category Lo, script Hangul, name HANGUL SYLLABLE HAN, UTF-8 ED 95 9C. The emoji 😀 is U+1F600: four UTF-8 bytes F0 9F 98 80 and the UTF-16 surrogate pair D83D DE00.