What are HTML entities?
HTML character references let you represent characters that would otherwise have a special meaning in markup. For example, < represents a less-than sign, and & represents an ampersand. Numeric references identify a character by its code point.
When should I encode text for HTML?
Encoding can help when displaying a code example or including text in an HTML document. This encoder handles ampersands, angle brackets and quotes. The optional non-ASCII setting also turns characters such as accented letters and emoji into numeric references.
Does encoding make every input safe?
No. The correct escaping depends on where a value is used: HTML text, an attribute, JavaScript and a URL have different rules. A generic entity conversion is not a replacement for a framework’s contextual escaping or a proper HTML sanitiser.
Will decoded markup run in this tool?
No. Results remain plain text in the output box. Named and numeric references with semicolons are decoded in one pass; the tool does not render the decoded text as a webpage. That means you can inspect a value without turning its tags into active content.
See the HTML standard’s named character references. For a URL’s %20 or %26 escapes, use the URL decoder.