Convert HTML entities back to readable text

Turn HTML named and numeric character references into Unicode code points.

freeworks offlinenothing uploaded
ToolHTML Entity Decode
Input
Output
—

How it works

Named, decimal, and hexadecimal character references are recognized by the HTML tokenizer and converted to Unicode code points, with browser-defined recovery for malformed or ambiguous references. The conversion is text decoding, not sanitization of the resulting content.

  • HTML’s reference table covers common delimiters while numeric forms cover every code point.

Worked example

Named Entities
Decode common named HTML entities back to text
Input
											<div class="main">Tom & Jerry</div>
Output
												<div class="main">Tom & Jerry</div>

When to use this

Scraped text, CMS previews, and browser-compatibility fixtures decode entities.

Edge cases

  • An entity inside a JavaScript string is not automatically safe after decoding.
  • Missing semicolons can be ambiguous in attribute contexts.
  • Invalid numeric code points use replacement behavior rather than arbitrary Unicode.

References