Developer Tools
Look Up a Unicode Character
Unicode Character Lookup for quick browser-based work with focused input and copy-ready output.
Paste a character or text, enter a code point (U+1F600, 0x41, é, decimal 65), or search names such as “heart”, “arrow” or “greek” from a curated list of popular characters.
| Format | Value | Copy |
|---|---|---|
| Code point | U+1F600 | |
| Decimal | 128512 | |
| UTF-8 bytes (hex) | F0 9F 98 80 | |
| UTF-16 code units | D83D DE00 | |
| HTML entity (hex) | 😀 | |
| HTML entity (decimal) | 😀 | |
| CSS escape | \1F600 | |
| JavaScript (ES6) | \u{1F600} | |
| JavaScript / JSON (UTF-16) | \uD83D\uDE00 | |
| URL encoded | %F0%9F%98%80 |
Direct Answer
Use the Unicode Character Lookup when you need a character's code point (U+XXXX), its name, or its UTF-8 or UTF-16 encoded bytes.
Code Points vs Encoded Bytes
A Unicode code point is an abstract number assigned to a character, while an encoding like UTF-8 or UTF-16 defines how that number is actually stored as bytes, and the two are not the same thing.
- A code point is written as U+ followed by hexadecimal digits, such as U+0041 for the letter A.
- UTF-8 is a variable-length encoding, using 1 to 4 bytes per code point depending on its value.
- UTF-16 uses 2 bytes for most common characters but needs a surrogate pair (4 bytes total) for code points above U+FFFF.
- The same character can look completely different at the byte level depending on which encoding is used to store or transmit it.
Why One Visible Character Can Be Multiple Code Points
What looks like a single character on screen, called a grapheme, is often built from more than one underlying code point combined together.
- An emoji with a skin-tone modifier is actually the base emoji code point plus a separate modifier code point.
- A combining diacritic, like an accent mark, can be applied to a base letter as a separate code point rather than being baked into a single precomposed character.
- Zero Width Joiner (ZWJ) sequences combine multiple emoji into one visually joined glyph, such as a family emoji built from individual person emoji.
- Unicode normalization forms (NFC and NFD) define whether a character is represented as one precomposed code point or as a base character plus combining marks.
How to Use Unicode Character Lookup
- Open the tool on this page.
- Enter or paste your input in the field provided.
- Review the result shown on the page, then copy or download it.
Reference
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Complete the utility task shown on this page. |
| Input | The value or content requested by the tool. |
| Result | The generated or processed output shown on the page. |
| Best for | Quick browser-based utility work. |
| Category | Developer Tools |
| Works on | Desktop, tablet, and mobile browsers |
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Unicode code point?
A code point is the unique number Unicode assigns to a character, written in the format U+XXXX using hexadecimal digits. It's an abstract identifier, separate from how that number gets physically stored as bytes in a particular encoding.
What's the difference between a code point and the character I see on screen?
What you see on screen is called a grapheme, and while many graphemes correspond to exactly one code point, some are built from multiple code points combined together, such as an emoji with a modifier or a letter with a combining accent. Counting code points and counting visible characters can therefore give different results for the same string.
Why does an emoji with a skin-tone modifier count as more than one code point?
The base emoji (like a hand gesture) and the skin-tone modifier are two separate Unicode code points that get displayed together as one combined glyph. This means a single visible emoji can actually be two, or with joined sequences even more, code points long.
What is a surrogate pair in UTF-16?
UTF-16 normally uses 2 bytes per code point, but code points above U+FFFF (outside the Basic Multilingual Plane) don't fit in 2 bytes, so UTF-16 represents them as a pair of two special 2-byte values called a surrogate pair. Many emoji fall above U+FFFF and require a surrogate pair in UTF-16.
What's the difference between UTF-8 and UTF-16 encoding of the same character?
Both encode the identical underlying code point, but UTF-8 uses 1 to 4 bytes per code point depending on its value, while UTF-16 uses 2 bytes for most common characters and 4 bytes (a surrogate pair) for code points above U+FFFF. The resulting byte sequences look completely different even though the character represented is the same.
How many bytes does a UTF-8 encoded character take?
It depends on the code point's value: ASCII characters (U+0000 to U+007F) take 1 byte, most Latin and common symbols take 2 bytes, most common CJK characters take 3 bytes, and characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, like many emoji, take 4 bytes.
What is a combining character or diacritic?
A combining character is a code point that modifies the character before it rather than standing on its own, such as a combining acute accent applied to a plain 'e' to visually produce 'é'. This is different from a precomposed character, where 'é' exists as a single dedicated code point on its own.
What is Unicode normalization, and what's the difference between NFC and NFD?
Normalization defines a consistent way to represent text that could otherwise be encoded multiple different ways. NFC (Normalization Form C) prefers precomposed single code points where available, while NFD (Normalization Form D) decomposes characters into a base character plus separate combining marks. Two strings that look identical can fail an exact string comparison if one is NFC and the other is NFD.