Unicode Encoder converts text into \uXXXX escape sequences — the format used in JavaScript, JSON, Java, and Python string literals to represent characters by their Unicode code point. Use it to embed special characters, emoji, or non-ASCII text in source code without relying on file encoding, or to find the code point of any character.
Unicode assigns every character a unique number called a code point. In JavaScript and JSON, you can write any character as \u followed by four hexadecimal digits representing that code point. Characters above U+FFFF (including most emoji) require two escape sequences called a surrogate pair because the basic \uXXXX format can only represent 16-bit values.
The \u prefix tells JavaScript, JSON, Java, and other languages that the following four hexadecimal digits represent a Unicode code point. For example, \u0041 is the letter "A" (decimal 65). This format lets you include any Unicode character in source code using only printable ASCII characters.
The \uXXXX format uses 16 bits, which can represent code points up to U+FFFF. Emoji and other characters above U+FFFF use a two-part encoding called a surrogate pair. For example, 🌍 (U+1F30D) becomes \uD83C\uDF0D because it requires two 16-bit values to represent.
Yes, the encoder converts every character including ASCII letters to \uXXXX format. This produces a fully escaped string where no original characters remain. If you only need non-ASCII characters encoded, you would need to filter or selectively encode specific characters in your code.
No. HTML entities like & or 😀 are interpreted by HTML parsers. Unicode escape sequences (\uXXXX) are interpreted by JavaScript, JSON, Java, and Python string parsers. They represent the same characters but in different contexts.
No. The encoding runs entirely in your browser using the charCodeAt() and toString(16) JavaScript methods. Your text never leaves your device.
Tool workspace
Free Unicode Encoder online — instantly convert raw text and special characters into safe JavaScript Unicode escape sequences (\uXXXX). Prevent character encoding bugs. No login.
Output
Input
Hello 🌍
Output
\u0048\u0065\u006c\u006c\u006f\u0020\ud83c\udf0d
