My Tool Studio
Developer Tools·2 min read

HTML Encode and Decode Online: Entities, Free

Some characters mean something special to a browser, so dropping them into a page raw can break it. This tool fixes that both ways: html encode and decode in your browser, free, turning characters into html entities and back. It is an html encode decode tool that keeps your text local.

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What HTML entities are

Codes that stand in for tricky characters.

An entity is a short code that represents a character the browser would otherwise read as markup. Writing the code for an ampersand or an angle bracket lets it show up on the page instead of breaking the HTML. These are called html entities or html character entities, and they exist so you can display any of the special html characters literally.

There are two flavors. Named entities use words, like the code for a less-than sign, while numeric ones use html character codes, a number that points at a specific character. To html escape text means replacing the risky characters with whichever form you prefer.

Encoding and decoding

Both directions, one click each.

To make text safe, paste it and encode. This html encode online step swaps the special characters for their entity codes, ready to drop into an attribute or a template. The reverse is just as quick: paste content full of entities and run html decode, also searched as html decode online or html entity decode, to read the plain text again.

Both sit on one page, so the full html encode decode flow takes a single click each way. On decode it understands both named entities and numeric ones, so older or hand-written markup still comes through cleanly.

Entities versus full HTML

This handles characters, not whole documents.

It is worth knowing where this tool stops. It works on characters, so it is not a general html parser online or a broad html converter that restructures a whole document. If you need to format or tidy actual markup, the HTML Beautifier is the better fit, and you can come back here whenever a stray character needs escaping.

Open HTML Entity Encoder

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Related research

If you found this useful, the other Developer guides are written in the same voice. We keep them short, practical, and rooted in real work.

About the makers

mytoolstudio is designed and built by the team at GAP3, a small studio that ships product, brand, and growth work for early stage companies. We built this site as a free public good. Read more about us at gap3.co.

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Open HTML Entity Encoder