Escape Unicode

An escape converts a character to a backslash-prefixed (or entity-prefixed) text representation of its code point: € becomes € in JavaScript, € in HTML, or 20AC in CSS. You need it when the output channel can’t represent the character directly – older code editors that mangle UTF-8, build systems that strip non-ASCII, JSON serialisers that prefer ASCII output, source files committed to environments with unknown encodings, or string literals in languages that don’t accept literal Unicode in source.

js-modern uses ES6’s u{XXXX} form for astral-plane characters (U+10000 and above), which keeps each emoji as one escape: 🎉 → u{1F389}. js-surrogate emits the older uXXXX form using UTF-16 surrogate pairs, so emoji become two escapes: 🎉 → 🎉. JSON requires the surrogate-pair form – the u{} syntax is not valid JSON. Pick js-modern for application source, js-surrogate for JSON output or any context that needs to round-trip through a JSON parser.

Emoji are encoded as a single code point above U+FFFF. The tool iterates by code point (using for…of), not by UTF-16 code unit, so each emoji produces one escape in formats that support astral planes (js-modern, python, html-hex, html-dec, css) and a surrogate pair in formats that don’t (js-surrogate). Variation selectors (FE0F) and ZWJ sequences (200D) are escaped as separate code points – that’s correct.

The CSS escape rule says HEX consumes up to 6 hexadecimal characters from the input that follows. So if the character after the escape is itself a hex digit, the parser glues them together. A trailing space (which CSS subsequently swallows) prevents that. Example: escaping A next to a literal 0 becomes 41 0 not 410.

Yes. The auto-detector runs six independent regex passes – one per escape form (u{X}, UXXXXXXXX, uXXXX with surrogate-pair re-combination, &#xHH;, &#NNN;, CSS HEX). Anything that doesn’t match a known form is left intact, so plain text mixed with escapes round-trips cleanly.

Each Unicode code point is treated as a separate unit. Arabic, Hebrew, and Indic scripts work – every character produces its own escape. Combining marks (like the accent on é when stored as e + U+0301) escape as two separate sequences. If you want the precomposed form, normalise with NFC first (String.prototype.normalize('NFC') in the browser console).

Yes – toggle “Also escape ASCII characters”. This is useful for fully ASCII-safe output (e.g. building a JSON string where you want every character escaped) or for obfuscation. By default ASCII passes through verbatim because that’s what nearly every real use case wants.

Yes. The page loads three static files (HTML, CSS, JS) and then runs entirely in your browser. Your input never leaves the device – no fetch, no XHR, no analytics, no cookies. You can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and the tool still works.

Yes – free, unlimited, no signup, no watermark. Use the output anywhere. Attribution to is appreciated but not required.