Overview / Developer & Code / HTML Entities Encoder / Decoder
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HTML Entities Encoder / Decoder

Encode special characters to HTML entities or decode named, decimal and hex entities back to text – instantly in your browser.

Paste or type your input; results appear instantly and errors are shown below the input.

Your files and input never leave your browser – nothing is uploaded.

You paste <div class="note"> into a blog post, and the published page shows nothing. The browser read it as a tag, not as text. An HTML entity fixes this. It is a short code such as &lt; that stands for exactly one character. This HTML entities encoder writes the codes for you, and the decoder reads them back.

Three jobs for an HTML entities tool

Developers escape JSON or XML snippets so a tutorial can show them as text. Authors of email templates turn a copyright sign and a euro sign into entities, because some old mail clients garble them. Someone who gets a scraped page full of &amp;quot; runs the decoder, and sometimes twice.

Four buttons and one output field

  1. Paste your text into the input field. A sample line is already there, and the output field already shows its encoded form.
  2. Encode escapes five characters: &, <, >, " and '. The double quote becomes &quot; and the single quote becomes &#39;.
  3. Encode all non-ASCII is for target files that cannot hold UTF-8. It also converts every character above code point 126.
  4. Decode turns the entities in the input back into characters.
  5. Read the output, then press Copy. Clear empties both fields.

The output does not follow your typing. Press a button after each change.

Why the decoder skips umlauts and needs two clicks for double escapes

The decoder knows the 26 named entities that the encoder can write, plus &apos;. These are the five basic ones, &nbsp;, typographic quotes, dashes and symbols such as &copy; and &euro;. A name outside that list, for example &auml;, stays as it is. Numeric forms such as &#228; and &#xE4; work for any valid code point.

Decoding runs one pass. &amp;lt; becomes &lt;, not <. A missing semicolon stops recognition, and names are case-sensitive, so &COPY; stays untouched.

Plain Encode leaves a non-breaking space as it is. Only Encode all non-ASCII writes &nbsp;, and it gives every other character beyond the table a decimal entity. An emoji gives one entity, not two.

Where your text goes

Nowhere. The conversion is plain JavaScript in the page, no request is sent and nothing is stored. Only the Copy button acts outside the page: it writes the output to your clipboard.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Paste the text and press Encode. The tool replaces &, <, >, double quotes and single quotes with entities.