Unicode Escape Converter

Convert between native text and Java-style \uXXXX Unicode escape sequences. Bidirectional and live.

All processing happens locally in your browser. Nothing is sent to any server.

Ignore Latin characters (A-Z, 0-9, punctuation)

Native

ASCII / Escaped

What is Unicode Escape Conversion?

Unicode escape sequences represent characters using their hexadecimal code point in the format \uXXXX. This notation is used in Java, JavaScript, Python, C#, and many other programming languages to safely include non-ASCII characters in source code, configuration files, and data formats. For example, the character "é" becomes \u00E9 and "日" becomes \u65E5.

When do you need Unicode escaping?

Unicode escaping is essential when working with Java .properties files, JSON data containing international characters, JavaScript string literals, or any context where non-ASCII characters might cause encoding issues. It's also commonly used for internationalization (i18n), localization files, and ensuring compatibility across systems with different default character encodings.

How this converter works

This tool converts bidirectionally and in real time. Type native text on the left to see escaped output on the right, or paste escaped text on the right to decode it back to readable characters. The "Ignore Latin characters" option keeps basic ASCII (A-Z, 0-9, punctuation) as-is, only escaping characters above U+007F. Surrogate pairs for emoji and rare CJK characters above U+FFFF are handled automatically.