How to Use the Character Identifier
Paste or type one character into the box above. The character identifier will instantly analyze it and show detailed information about the character, including its Unicode name, plain English description, Unicode code point, decimal value, hexadecimal value, octal value, binary value, HTML character code, UTF-8 byte size, UTF-16 code units, and character category.
This character identifier tool is designed for identifying a single unknown character. You can use it to identify Unicode characters, special characters, hidden characters, symbols, emojis, punctuation marks, letters, numbers, whitespace characters, and characters copied from websites, PDFs, spreadsheets, documents, messages, or code.
The main result gives you a quick everyday explanation of the character. For example, if you enter a, the tool can explain that it is the lowercase letter a, show its Unicode name as LATIN SMALL LETTER A, and display its Unicode code point as U+0061.
What Is a Character Identifier?
A character identifier is a tool that tells you what a character is. It can identify ordinary characters such as letters and numbers, but it can also identify special characters such as symbols, emojis, punctuation marks, accented letters, invisible spaces, tabs, line breaks, and other Unicode characters.
This is helpful because some characters look similar even though they are different. For example, a hyphen, en dash, em dash, and minus sign can look alike in some fonts, but each one has a different Unicode code point and may behave differently in text, code, search engines, databases, and websites.
A character identifier is especially useful when you see a strange character and want to answer questions like “what character is this,” “what is this Unicode character,” “what is the HTML code for this character,” “what is the binary value of this character,” or “is this character an invisible character?”
Identify Unicode Characters
Unicode is a standard that assigns a unique code point to characters used in writing systems, symbols, emojis, punctuation, and technical text. A Unicode character identifier helps you find the exact Unicode code point for a character.
For example, the letter A, the copyright symbol ©, the euro symbol €, and the smiley emoji 😊 are all different Unicode characters. This Unicode character identifier shows the Unicode code point, Unicode name when available, decimal code point, hexadecimal value, octal value, binary value, and useful code formats for the character you enter.
Developers, writers, editors, students, and content creators can use this tool as a Unicode code point finder, character code finder, symbol identifier, emoji identifier, and special character identifier.
Find Hidden and Invisible Characters
Some characters are hard to see on the screen. Spaces, tabs, line breaks, carriage returns, non-breaking spaces, zero-width spaces, zero-width joiners, and other invisible characters can affect how text behaves even when they are not obvious.
This hidden character identifier can help reveal invisible characters and whitespace characters. If you paste a hidden character into the box, the tool can show a readable label such as [space], [tab], [new line], [non-breaking space], or [zero-width space].
Finding hidden characters is useful when copied text has strange spacing, a form rejects your input, code does not work as expected, a spreadsheet value does not match, or a database search fails because of an invisible character.
Identify Symbols and Emojis
This tool can also work as a symbol identifier and emoji character identifier. You can paste a currency symbol, math symbol, arrow, punctuation mark, technical symbol, or emoji to inspect its character details.
Emojis can be more complicated than they appear. Some emoji characters use multiple bytes, and some emoji sequences can include more than one Unicode code point. A character identifier can help you inspect the first detected character and understand its Unicode and encoding details.
If you want to count emojis in longer text, you may also find our emoji counter helpful. If you want to analyze symbols, try our symbol counter.
Character Identifier Results Explained
The character result section gives a focused analysis of the character you enter. Each field is useful for a different purpose.
Character: Shows the character itself, or a readable label if the character is invisible or hard to see.
Unicode name: Shows the character name when available, such as LATIN SMALL LETTER A, DIGIT ZERO, or SPACE.
Description: Explains the character in plain language, such as saying that a is the lowercase letter a, 7 is the digit seven, or [space] is a blank space character used to separate words.
Unicode code point: Shows the Unicode value for the character, such as U+0041 for the capital letter A.
Character category: Classifies the character into a broad category such as letter, number, punctuation, symbol, emoji, whitespace, invisible format character, or other.
Decimal, hexadecimal, octal, and binary: Show the character code point in several number systems. These values are useful for programming, debugging, encoding, and technical text work.
HTML code: Shows HTML numeric character references that can be used to display the character on a webpage.
UTF-8 bytes: Shows how many bytes the character uses in UTF-8 encoding. This is useful for websites, APIs, databases, and systems with byte limits.
ASCII and visibility: Shows whether the character is part of the ASCII range and whether it is normally visible on screen.
Why Use a Character Identifier?
You may need a character identifier when a character looks unfamiliar, causes formatting problems, breaks code, changes search results, or appears differently across websites and apps.
Developers can use this character identifier to inspect strings, debug user input, check Unicode code points, identify HTML character codes, check binary character values, and troubleshoot encoding issues in databases, APIs, URLs, JSON, and form submissions.
Writers and editors can use it to identify strange punctuation, invisible spacing, special symbols, copied formatting, accented characters, and unusual marks that may appear in text copied from PDFs, websites, word processors, or spreadsheets.
Students and researchers can use it to learn more about Unicode characters, symbols, scripts, text encoding, HTML codes, binary values, and special characters used across different languages and writing systems.
Common Uses for This Character Identifier
Identify an unknown character: Paste a character and find out what it is.
Find a Unicode code point: Look up the Unicode value for a character, symbol, emoji, or punctuation mark.
Get an HTML character code: Find the HTML decimal and hexadecimal code for a character.
Find octal and binary character values: Convert a character into decimal, hexadecimal, octal, and binary code point values.
Find invisible characters: Identify spaces, tabs, line breaks, non-breaking spaces, zero-width spaces, and other hidden characters.
Debug text problems: Inspect characters that may be causing issues in code, forms, databases, spreadsheets, URLs, or web pages.
Analyze emojis and symbols: Check the Unicode and encoding details of emojis, math symbols, arrows, currency signs, and other special characters.
Character Identifier FAQ
What does this character identifier do?
This character identifier identifies one character and shows detailed information such as its Unicode name, plain English description, Unicode code point, decimal value, hexadecimal value, octal value, binary value, HTML code, UTF-8 byte size, and character category.
Can I identify Unicode characters?
Yes. This Unicode character identifier can identify Unicode characters, symbols, emojis, letters, numbers, punctuation marks, whitespace characters, and special characters.
Can this tool identify hidden characters?
Yes. This hidden character identifier can help identify spaces, tabs, line breaks, carriage returns, non-breaking spaces, zero-width spaces, and other characters that may be hard to see.
Can I identify emojis?
Yes. You can paste an emoji into the text box to see its character details, Unicode value, HTML code, UTF-8 byte size, and character category.
What is a Unicode code point?
A Unicode code point is a unique value assigned to a character. It helps computers store, process, and display text consistently across different systems.
What is an HTML character code?
An HTML character code is a numeric character reference that can be used to display a character on a webpage. This tool shows both decimal and hexadecimal HTML codes when possible.
What are octal and binary character values?
Octal and binary values are different number-system versions of the character code point. They are useful for programming, encoding, debugging, and learning how characters are represented digitally.
Why do some characters look the same?
Some characters can look almost identical in certain fonts even though they are different Unicode characters. A character identifier helps you check the exact character and code point.
Can I paste more than one character?
The tool is designed to identify one character at a time. If you paste more than one character, it will keep and analyze the first character so the results stay focused and easy to understand.
Related Tools
If you are analyzing text characters, you may also find our character counter, unique character counter, byte counter, grapheme counter, emoji counter, and symbol counter useful.
Thanks for Using Our Character Identifier
We hope you enjoy using this character identifier, Unicode character identifier, special character identifier, symbol identifier, emoji identifier, character code finder, binary character finder, and hidden character finder. If you have questions or comments, please let us know.