What are these invisible characters?

Zero-width spaces, byte order marks (BOM), soft hyphens, text direction marks and control characters. They often come from text copied from websites, PDFs and messaging apps.

Why does a search miss text that looks identical?

There is often an invisible character in the middle of the word. After cleaning the text here, the search works again.

Are combined emojis affected?

Yes. Family and profession emojis use an invisible joining character. Removing it splits them into individual emojis.

Remove invisible characters

Some text carries characters you cannot see but that break searches, comparisons, passwords and code. This tool removes those hidden characters.

1.Paste the suspicious text into the original text box.
2.Compare the character count before and after to see how many were removed.
3.Copy or download the clean text.

Tool

Options

Replace special spaces (like non-breaking spaces) with regular spaces

Original text

0 characters · 0 words · 0 lines

Result

0 characters · 0 words · 0 lines

Everything is processed in your browser. Your text and files are never sent to a server.Questions about this tool?

Learn more about Remove invisible characters

Remove invisible characters like zero-width spaces, BOM and soft hyphens that break searches, passwords and code. Free and private.

What are these invisible characters?: Zero-width spaces, byte order marks (BOM), soft hyphens, text direction marks and control characters. They often come from text copied from websites, PDFs and messaging apps.
Why does a search miss text that looks identical?: There is often an invisible character in the middle of the word. After cleaning the text here, the search works again.
Are combined emojis affected?: Yes. Family and profession emojis use an invisible joining character. Removing it splits them into individual emojis.