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UTF-8 Decoder

Decode UTF-8 bytes and fix mojibake.

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Quick Tool Overview

The UTF-8 Decoder does two jobs: it decodes a list of UTF-8 bytes back into text, and it repairs mojibake — the é and ’ that appear when UTF-8 is read as Latin-1. The second is what most people arrive looking for, and it fixes most real cases in one pass.

What it does
Decodes UTF-8 bytes and repairs mojibake
You give it
A list of bytes, or text full of é and ’
You get back
The correct text
Best for
Fixing broken imports, migrations and feeds
Text Tools Free, unlimited use No sign-up Runs in your browser

About the UTF-8 Decoder

Mojibake is what you get when UTF-8 text is read as if it were Latin-1: café becomes café, a curly apostrophe becomes ’, and an em dash becomes —. It happens constantly in database migrations, CSV imports and badly configured feeds, and once you recognise the pattern it is entirely repairable.

This tool does two things. It decodes a list of UTF-8 bytes back into text, in hex, decimal or percent-encoded form. And it repairs mojibake by reversing the mistaken decoding — reading the mangled characters back as bytes and decoding them properly as UTF-8. That second function is the one people actually arrive looking for, and it fixes the great majority of real cases in one pass.

Key features of the UTF-8 Decoder

Mojibake repair

Reverses the mistaken Latin-1 read and decodes the bytes properly, which fixes the great majority of real cases.

Confidence reported

How many recognisable mojibake sequences were found, so a low count warns you the text may be fine already.

Byte decoding too

Hex, decimal and percent-encoded byte lists all decode back to text.

Invalid sequences flagged

Bytes that do not form valid UTF-8 are named rather than silently becoming replacement characters.

Honest about limits

The page explains that text saved again in a lossy encoding has genuinely lost characters no tool can recover.

How to use the UTF-8 Decoder

  1. 1

    Paste the bytes or the mangled text

    A list of UTF-8 bytes, or text full of é and ’.

  2. 2

    Choose the mode

    Decode bytes, or repair mojibake by reversing a mistaken Latin-1 read.

  3. 3

    Read the result

    The correct text appears, with any invalid sequences reported.

  4. 4

    Check the repair worked

    The tool counts how many mangled sequences it recognised, so you know it found the real problem.

Frequently asked questions

Reading UTF-8 bytes as if they were a single-byte encoding, usually Latin-1 or Windows-1252. The two bytes of an é get read as two separate characters, Ã and ©, which is exactly what you see.

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