HTML Encoder & Decoder

It replaces characters that have a special meaning in HTML (chiefly &, <, >, " and ') with their entity equivalents (&amp;, &lt;, &gt;, &quot; and &#39;). The browser then shows those characters as plain text instead of trying to interpret them as markup. So if you want a page to literally display “<div>” rather than start a div element, you encode it first. Decoding is the reverse: it turns the entities back into the original characters.

Any time you want to show code or symbols as text rather than have the browser act on them: a tutorial that prints HTML tags, a code snippet inside a blog post, or a value you are inserting into an attribute. It is also essential when you place untrusted text (a name, a comment, a search term) into a page: encoding the special characters stops that text from being treated as markup. The numeric form is handy for emails and older systems that mangle accented or non-ASCII characters.

They are three ways of writing the same character. A named entity uses a readable label, such as &copy; for ©. A decimal numeric entity uses the character’s code point in base 10, like &#169;. A hexadecimal one uses base 16, like &#xA9;. Browsers understand all three, so the choice is about readability and compatibility: names are clearest, while numeric forms work for every character even when no name exists.

Usually not. A modern, UTF-8 page can show café, € or 😀 directly with no encoding at all, which keeps the source readable. Switch on “encode all non-ASCII” only when something downstream cannot be trusted with UTF-8, for example an email template, a legacy CMS, or a system that strips accents. For everyday web pages, encoding just the five HTML-special characters is the right, minimal choice.

Encoding the HTML-special characters is the core defence when you drop untrusted text into ordinary page content or into a quoted attribute value, and this tool produces exactly that. But it is not a complete answer on its own: text placed inside a URL, a piece of inline JavaScript, or a CSS block needs a different kind of escaping that matches that context. Treat this tool as the right first step for HTML context, not a one-size-fits-all security fix.

Yes. The encoding and decoding both run entirely in your browser with plain JavaScript. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, and you can confirm that in your browser’s network panel. The optional share link keeps your text in the URL itself rather than on a server, and the on-device history can be cleared at any time. Nothing leaves your machine.