Unicode Character Lookup

About Unicode code points

Every character a computer can display — letters, digits, punctuation, CJK characters, emoji — is assigned a unique number called a code point in the Unicode standard, usually written as "U+" followed by hexadecimal digits (like U+0041 for "A"). This tool breaks down any text you type into its individual characters and shows each one's code point, decimal value, Unicode block, and byte representation in the two most common encodings, plus lets you look up a character from its code.

How the lookup works

For text input, the tool iterates through each character, reads its code point using JavaScript's built-in Unicode-aware string methods, and looks up which named Unicode block that code point falls in (like "Basic Latin" or "CJK Unified Ideographs") from a reference table. It also computes the raw bytes for UTF-8 and UTF-16 encoding and the equivalent HTML numeric character entity. The reverse lookup accepts a code point in several formats (U+XXXX, 0x hex, plain decimal, or a single character) and looks up the same details.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between UTF-8 and UTF-16 bytes?

Both are ways of encoding the same Unicode code point as bytes, but they group and pad those bytes differently — UTF-8 uses 1 to 4 bytes per character and is the dominant encoding on the web, while UTF-16 (used internally by JavaScript strings) uses 2 or 4 bytes per character.

Why do some characters show as "Space," "Tab," or "Control" instead of the character itself?

Whitespace and control characters (like space, tab, newline, or other non-printing characters below code point 32) don't have a visible glyph, so the tool shows a readable label instead of leaving that cell blank or showing an invisible character.

Is there a limit to how much text I can analyze at once?

The table displays up to 1000 characters per breakdown to keep the page responsive; if your text has more, a notice tells you the display was truncated, though the summary count and byte size still reflect the full text.