# Unicode Converter - Text to \u Escape, UTF-8 Hex & Code Points

> Free online Unicode converter: text to and from \uXXXX, HTML entities, UTF-8 hex bytes, %XX and U+ code points, with correct emoji handling and auto-detection.

- URL: https://qilingtools.com/en/unicode
- Category: Developer Tools (https://qilingtools.com/en/dev)
- Tags: [Developer](https://qilingtools.com/en/tags/dev), [Encoding](https://qilingtools.com/en/tags/encode)
- Last updated: 2026-10-26
- Price: Free, no sign-up
- Privacy: Runs locally in the browser; files are never uploaded

Code, logs and JSON are full of sequences like \u4f60\u597d, 你 or E4 BD A0. This tool turns any text into JavaScript/Java \uXXXX escapes, ES6 \u{…}, HTML numeric entities, UTF-8 hex bytes, URL percent-encoding or a U+ code point list, and decodes the other way by auto-detecting whatever formats are mixed into the input. Characters beyond the BMP, such as emoji, are handled correctly as surrogate pairs or full code points. A details table lists each character's code point, decimal value, UTF-8 and UTF-16 units, which is handy for debugging mojibake.

## How to use

1. Choose Text → Escapes or Escapes → Text
2. When encoding, pick the format (\uXXXX, &#x…;, UTF-8 …) and optionally convert only non-ASCII characters
3. Read the result and the per-character table, and copy

## Features

- \uXXXX, \u{…}, \U, &#x…;, &#…;, %XX, \xHH and U+XXXX formats
- Emoji and astral characters as surrogate pairs or full code points
- Auto-detecting decoder, even for mixed formats
- Plain hex byte strings (E4 BD A0) decoded as UTF-8
- Option to escape only non-ASCII characters
- Per-character code point, decimal, UTF-8 and UTF-16
- Switching direction carries the result over
- Runs locally, no upload

## FAQ

### Why does one emoji become two \u escapes?

JavaScript, Java and JSON strings are UTF-16, so characters above U+FFFF (like 😀) need two surrogate units, written \ud83d\ude00. If your target supports ES6, choose the \u{1f600} format to write the full code point.

### Do I need to tell it which format to decode?

No. It recognizes \uXXXX, \u{…}, HTML entities, U+ code points, \xHH / %XX byte runs and space-separated hex bytes automatically, leaves normal text untouched, and handles mixed formats together.

### What is the difference between Unicode and UTF-8?

Unicode assigns every character a code point ("你" is U+4F60); UTF-8 is one way of storing code points as bytes, where "你" takes three bytes E4 BD A0. The details table shows code point, UTF-8 and UTF-16 side by side.

### Is my data uploaded?

No. Everything runs locally in your browser with no network upload and is discarded when you close the page, so it is safe for internal or sensitive data.

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