Encode or decode HTML entities online

How it works

1. 1

   Pick Encode or Decode.

2. 2

   Paste your text or HTML.

3. 3

   Press the same button again after editing to refresh the output.

4. 4

   Copy the result.

About the HTML Entity Encode/Decode

Characters such as <, > and & have meaning in HTML, so text that contains them must be escaped before it is shown on a page, or the browser will treat it as markup. This tool escapes text into safe HTML entities and decodes entity-filled HTML back into plain text. Decoding understands named entities like &copy; as well as numeric ones like &#8364;.

What you can do

• Encode text so that &, < and > become &amp;, &lt; and &gt;.
• Decode any entity the browser knows, named or numeric, back into the character it stands for.
• Strip tags while decoding: HTML is read and only its text content is returned.
• Swap output and input to reverse the operation, then copy the result.

When it works best

• Showing a code sample containing tags inside a blog post or documentation page.
• Reading product descriptions or feed titles that arrive full of &amp; and &quot;.
• Turning a snippet of HTML into the plain text it displays.

Things to know

• The conversion uses your browser's own HTML parser, so nothing is uploaded.
• Encoding escapes only &, < and >. Quotes are left as they are, so encoded text is safe inside elements but not inside attribute values.
• Decoding removes tags, so it is not suited to escaped markup you want to keep as HTML.
• For percent-encoded URLs use URL Encode/Decode, and for backslash escapes in code strings use String Escape/Unescape.

Frequently asked questions