HTML entity encoder
Escape and unescape HTML entities like & and <.
Escapes & < > " ' — enough for HTML text and attribute values in a UTF-8 page.
Try
About this tool
- Runs in
- your browser
- Your input sent to our servers
- Nothing
- Kept on this device
- nothing
More in the privacy policy.
How to use it
- 01Choose Encode or Decode, then type or paste your text or HTML. Or pick one under Try.
- 02For encoding, choose Special characters (enough for a UTF-8 page) or Special and non-ASCII, in decimal or hex.
- 03Copy the result, or press Swap to run it back the other way.
Related tools
Questions
Which characters need encoding?
In HTML text and in quoted attribute values, five: & < > " and ', written as &, <, >, ", '. In a UTF-8 page every other character can stay as it is.
When do I need non-ASCII as numbers?
When the page or the system that stores it isn’t UTF-8, such as an old database or an email template. Every character above ~ becomes a numeric reference: é is é in decimal or é in hex, and an emoji is a single reference.
Which entities does Decode understand?
All of them: every named entity in the HTML standard, decimal and hex references, and the legacy forms browsers accept, such as © without a semicolon. It uses your browser’s own HTML parser, so it decodes exactly as a browser does for text on a page. Tags in the text are left as they are, and nothing in it runs. Inside attribute values browsers are stricter: in a link such as ?a=1¬=2, “¬” stays as written there but decodes to ¬ here.
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. It’s converted in your browser as you type. It isn’t sent to our servers, put into the page address or saved.