Why are code points and UTF-16 units different?

Characters above U+FFFF, such as most emoji, are stored as two UTF-16 units (a surrogate pair) but count as one Unicode code point. The summary shows both so you can see where strings will behave unexpectedly.

How are invisible characters shown?

Spaces, tabs, line feeds, and carriage returns get a visible label, and control characters are shown with a placeholder glyph, so you can spot hidden characters that cause bugs.

Is my text uploaded anywhere?

No. The inspection runs entirely in your browser and your text never leaves your device.

What is a Unicode code point?

A code point is the numeric identity of a character in the Unicode standard, written as U+ followed by hexadecimal — for example the letter A is U+0041 and 😀 is U+1F600. The inspector iterates your text by code point, so it correctly counts emoji and other characters above U+FFFF as one.

Why does the emoji count as one code point but two characters?

JavaScript stores strings in UTF-16, where any character above U+FFFF (most emoji) needs two 16-bit units called a surrogate pair. Iterating by code point counts it once, but the raw string length counts it twice — which is exactly the mismatch the summary highlights.

How do I find a hidden or invisible character?

Paste the text and look down the table for characters you did not expect — a non-breaking space (U+00A0), a zero-width space (U+200B), or a control character shown as a placeholder glyph. Each appears as its own row with a code point so you can locate and remove it.

How are character categories determined?

The tool uses Unicode property escapes — \\p{L} for letters, \\p{N} for numbers, \\p{P} for punctuation, \\p{S} for symbols, \\p{M} for marks and \\p{Z} for separators — plus special handling for spaces, tabs and control characters.

What is the difference between a code point and a grapheme?

A code point is one Unicode scalar value, while a grapheme is what a reader perceives as a single character — which may be several code points (for example a base letter plus a combining accent, or an emoji with a skin-tone modifier). This tool lists individual code points.

Unicode Character Inspector

Unicode character inspector

When text behaves unexpectedly — a string length is off by one, a regex misses an accented letter, or an invisible character breaks a copy-paste — the cause is usually hidden at the code-point level. This inspector splits any text into its individual Unicode code points and shows the U+ hex value, decimal value and category of each, making stray and invisible characters immediately visible.

How it works

The tool iterates your text by code point (using JavaScript’s surrogate-pair-aware string iteration), so characters above U+FFFF are handled correctly. For each character it reads codePointAt(0), formats it as U+XXXX hexadecimal, and classifies it with Unicode property escapes: \p{L} letter, \p{N} number, \p{P} punctuation, \p{S} symbol, \p{M} mark, \p{Z} separator, with explicit labels for space, tab, line feed, carriage return and control characters. The summary contrasts the code-point count with the raw UTF-16 unit count so you can see where a string’s length will surprise you.

Example

Inspecting Café — 日本語 😀 gives 9 code points but more UTF-16 units, because the emoji 😀 is a single code point (U+1F600) stored as two UTF-16 units. The é shows as U+00E9 (a Letter), the em dash — as U+2014 (Punctuation), each CJK character as a Letter in the U+65E5 range, and the trailing space as a labelled ␠ (space).

Character	Code point	Category
C	U+0043	Letter
é	U+00E9	Letter
—	U+2014	Punctuation
😀	U+1F600	Symbol

Everything runs in your browser — your text never leaves your device.