Reveal the Hidden Structure of Every Character With the Unicode Inspector
Two strings can look identical on screen and still be completely different underneath. One uses a regular space, the other a non-breaking space. One uses the letter "e" with a combining accent, the other the precomposed character é. When validation fails, hashes do not match, or a username is rejected, the culprit is almost always an invisible or lookalike character. The Unicode Inspector shows the codepoint, the official character name, and the Unicode category of every character in your text, so you can see exactly what is really there and fix the mismatch in seconds. Once you know how to read a codepoint table, mysterious encoding bugs stop being mysteries.
How to Inspect the Characters in Your Text
- Open the Unicode Inspector tool.
- Paste the suspicious string into the input box.
- Review the table that lists each character with its codepoint, name, and category.
- Look for surprises such as
U+00A0(non-breaking space) orU+200B(zero-width space). - Copy the replacement string with the correct characters and paste it back into your application.
Real Example: Two Strings That Look the Same
An API rejects a customer email address even though it matches the database value. The inspector reveals that the pasted string uses U+200B, a zero-width space, after the domain name. Remove that invisible character and the comparison succeeds immediately.
| Input | Codepoint | Name |
|---|---|---|
café | U+00E9 | LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE |
café | U+0065 U+0301 | LATIN SMALL LETTER E + COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT |
Tips for Best Results
- Check invisible characters first — zero-width spaces, soft hyphens, and non-breaking spaces are the usual suspects in validation failures.
- Compare codepoints, not pixels — two characters that look alike (such as Latin
Aand CyrillicА) always differ in codepoint. - Watch the category column — a stray
Cf(format) character in the middle of a word is almost always invisible and unwanted. - Normalize when you can — prefer precomposed characters, or apply NFC normalization in your code, to keep strings consistent.
- Keep the original — save the raw input alongside the analysis so you can compare before and after you edit the string.
When to Use This Tool
- Debugging validation — find the invisible characters that break email, phone, or password checks.
- Fixing hash mismatches — confirm two strings are byte-identical before hashing or signing them.
- Localization QA — verify that translated strings contain the intended scripts and not lookalike characters.
- Learning Unicode — explore how emoji, combining marks, and exotic scripts are encoded under the hood.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Unicode codepoint?
A codepoint is the numeric identifier of a character in the Unicode standard, written in hexadecimal form such as U+0041 for the capital letter A.
Why do two identical-looking strings have different codepoints?
Unicode contains many lookalike characters across scripts, such as the Latin A and the Greek or Cyrillic A. Visually similar characters can also be encoded differently, like a precomposed é versus e plus a combining accent.
What is a combining character?
A combining character modifies the preceding character, such as an acute accent that turns e into é. It has its own codepoint and category Mn (nonspacing mark).
What does the category column mean?
It classifies each character, for example Lu for uppercase letters, Nd for decimal digits, Zs for spaces, and Cf for invisible format characters.
How do I remove invisible characters from my text?
Identify the offending codepoints with the inspector, then delete or replace them in your editor. Many editors also offer a "show invisibles" mode that helps you spot them.
Is an emoji one character?
Most emoji are a sequence of codepoints: a base character plus variation selectors and sometimes skin-tone modifiers. The inspector shows each piece of the sequence.
What is the difference between a character and a grapheme?
A grapheme is what a user perceives as one symbol; it can be built from several codepoints, such as a letter plus combining marks. The inspector works at the codepoint level.
Does the tool support all Unicode scripts?
Yes. The inspector relies on the browser's Unicode tables, which cover the full standard including CJK, Arabic, Devanagari, emoji, and historic scripts. Every codepoint the browser knows is shown with its official name and category.