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Unicode Character Inspector
The Free Tool That Reveals Everything
About Any Symbol
Paste any character — a symbol, emoji, letter, or even a mystery character you found online — and the SymbolNow Unicode Character Inspector instantly tells you everything about it. What it’s called, where it comes from, how to type it, and how to use it in code.
Open the Unicode Character InspectorWhat Is the Unicode Character Inspector?
The Unicode Character Inspector is a free tool on SymbolNow that acts like an X-ray for any text character. You paste in a character — or a whole string of text — and it breaks down exactly what each character is at the Unicode level.
Every character you’ve ever typed or seen on a screen has a Unicode identity — an official name, a unique code point, a category, a script classification, and properties that tell software how to handle it. Most people never see this layer. The Inspector makes it visible in seconds, for free, no account needed.
It’s built for developers, designers, writers, linguists, and anyone who has ever looked at a character on screen and wondered: what exactly is that?
What the Inspector Reveals for Every Character
Paste any character into the Inspector and it immediately surfaces all of the following information:
Official Unicode Name
The exact name assigned to that character in the Unicode standard. Not what people call it — what it officially is.
© → COPYRIGHT SIGN
Code Point
The unique identifier for every Unicode character — always written as U+ followed by the hex number.
© → U+00A9
HTML Entity
The code you paste into HTML to display the character — useful for web developers who need safe character rendering.
© → © or ©
Unicode Category
How Unicode classifies the character — letter, punctuation, symbol, number, separator, control character, and more.
© → Other Symbol (So)
Script
Which writing system or script the character belongs to — Latin, Greek, Arabic, Devanagari, Han, Common, and so on.
α → Greek script
UTF-8 / UTF-16 Encoding
The actual bytes used to store the character in the most common text encodings — essential for developers working with character encoding.
© → 0xC2 0xA9 (UTF-8)
One-Click Copy
Copy any character directly from the results. No extra steps — the Inspector is a research tool and a copy-paste tool at the same time.
Click → copied to clipboard
Block & Unicode Version
Which Unicode block the character lives in, and which version of the Unicode standard first included it.
🌙 → Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs · Unicode 6.0
How to Use the Unicode Character Inspector — Step by Step
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Open the toolGo to symbolnow.com/unicode-character-inspector/ — the tool loads instantly in your browser. No account, no download, no installation. Works on desktop, tablet, and mobile.Bookmark it now — you’ll reach for it more than you expect.
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Paste your character or textClick the input field and paste (Ctrl+V / ⌘+V) any character, emoji, symbol, word, or sentence. You can paste a single character or a whole string — the Inspector analyses every character individually. You can also type directly into the field.Paste text you copied from an email, website, or document to inspect characters that look odd or unfamiliar.
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Read the results instantlyResults appear as you type or paste — no button to press, no loading. Each character is displayed in a card showing its Unicode name, code point, category, script, HTML entity, and encoding. For multi-character input, each character gets its own card in sequence.Scroll through the cards if you pasted a long string — each character is individually inspected.
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Copy what you needEach result card has copy buttons for the character itself, the code point (U+XXXX), and the HTML entity. Click any of them to copy that specific value to your clipboard. No highlighting required — single click, instantly copied.
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Use the information in your workTake the code point to look up the character in Unicode documentation. Use the HTML entity directly in your web code. Use the Unicode name to search for similar characters. Use the category and script information to understand how the character behaves in different software contexts.
Try it right now — paste any character
Open the Inspector in a new tab, paste any character you’re curious about, and get a complete breakdown in under a second. Free, instant, no account needed.
🔍 Open Unicode Character Inspector
Works on every device · No sign-up · Completely free
Who Uses the Unicode Character Inspector — and Why
Web developers and programmers
You’re debugging a string and there’s a character that looks like a space but isn’t — or a quote mark that looks like a straight quote but is actually a curly quote (U+201C) causing a JSON parse error. The Inspector immediately identifies any character by its exact Unicode code point and shows the encoding bytes, so you can pinpoint exactly what the problematic character is and how to handle it in code.
Typical use: paste the suspicious character → get the exact code point → add to your sanitisation or detection logic
Writers and editors
You copied text from a PDF or a website and something looks off — the dashes are wrong, the quotes are curly instead of straight, or there are invisible characters causing weird line breaks. Paste the problem text into the Inspector and it shows you every character including invisible ones like zero-width spaces (U+200B), non-breaking spaces (U+00A0), and soft hyphens (U+00AD) that are invisible to the naked eye but cause real problems.
Typical use: paste copied text → find invisible characters → replace or remove them
Designers and typographers
You spotted a beautiful character in another designer’s work and want to know exactly what it is so you can use it too. The Inspector gives you the Unicode name, code point, and which font families typically support it — so you can find it in Character Map or the Mac Character Viewer, confirm it renders in your chosen font, and use it confidently in your designs.
Typical use: copy the mystery character → inspect it → get the name and code point → find it in your font
Social media users and bio builders
You see a symbol in someone’s Instagram bio that you love — something like ✦ or 𓆩 or ꕤ — but you have no idea what it’s called or where to find it. Copy the symbol, paste it into the Inspector, and within one second you know its Unicode name, code point, and category. From there you can find more characters in the same style or block, or simply copy it directly from the Inspector’s results.
Typical use: copy mystery bio symbol → inspect → get the name → find more like it
Students and academics
You need to include a specific mathematical symbol, Greek letter, or technical notation in a paper or assignment and you’re not sure which Unicode character to use. The Inspector lets you inspect characters from reference materials to confirm you have the right one — and gives you the HTML entity and code point you need to include it correctly in digital documents.
Typical use: inspect the symbol from your reference → confirm the Unicode name → use the code point in your document
Security and QA professionals
Certain Unicode characters are used in phishing attacks — for example, replacing Latin letters with visually identical characters from other scripts (Cyrillic а instead of Latin a) to create convincing fake domain names or usernames. The Inspector immediately identifies which script every character belongs to, making it easy to spot these homoglyph attacks in domain names, email addresses, or usernames.
Typical use: paste suspicious text → check script column → identify non-Latin characters masquerading as Latin
How It Compares to Other Methods
There are other ways to inspect Unicode characters — but none as fast, free, and comprehensive in one place.
| Method | Free | Name search | HTML entity | UTF-8 bytes | Instant | Mobile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SymbolNow Inspector | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Instant | ✓ Yes |
| Windows Character Map | ✓ Yes | ~ Limited | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ Slow | ✗ Windows only |
| Mac Character Viewer | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✗ No | ~ Moderate | ✗ Mac only |
| Unicode.org lookup | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ Slow interface | ~ Poor UX |
| Developer browser tools | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✗ No | ~ Manual | ~ Requires setup | ✗ Not practical |
Things You Can Discover with the Inspector
Invisible characters hiding in your text
Zero-width spaces (U+200B), zero-width non-joiner (U+200C), and soft hyphens (U+00AD) are completely invisible in normal text but cause real problems — they break word wrapping, cause search failures, confuse copy-paste behaviour, and break code string matching. The Inspector reveals them immediately. They appear as character cards even though they display as nothing visually.
Why two characters that look identical are different
The Latin letter “a”, the Cyrillic “а”, and the Greek “α” look virtually identical in many fonts — but they are three different Unicode characters with three different code points (U+0061, U+0430, U+03B1). The Inspector immediately identifies which is which by showing the script and Unicode name. This matters for passwords, domain names, and any text where character identity is security-critical.
What that mystery character in a bio actually is
You see 𓆩 in someone’s Instagram bio and have no idea where it comes from. Paste it into the Inspector → immediately see: EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH D036 · U+1317A · Script: Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Now you know exactly what it is, where to find more like it, and that it’s from the Egyptian Hieroglyphs Unicode block added in Unicode 5.2.
The HTML entity for any symbol
Need to put © in HTML? The Inspector tells you: © (named entity), © (decimal), or © (hex). Need ™? It’s ™. Need ≠? It’s ≠. No more Googling “html entity for [symbol]” — paste the character, get the entity.
Pro tip — inspect an entire sentence
You don’t have to inspect one character at a time. Paste an entire sentence, paragraph, or string of mixed characters — the Inspector processes every character individually and displays them as a sequence of cards. This is especially useful for checking text copied from PDFs, foreign websites, or any source where character encoding might be unexpected.
FAQ
What is a Unicode character inspector?
A Unicode character inspector is a tool that takes any text character as input and displays its complete Unicode properties — including the official Unicode name, code point (the unique U+XXXX identifier), HTML entity, character category, script, and encoding bytes. It’s essentially an X-ray for text characters, showing the underlying identity of any character you paste into it.
What is a Unicode code point?
A Unicode code point is the unique number assigned to every character in the Unicode standard. It’s written as U+ followed by a hexadecimal number — for example, © is U+00A9, ★ is U+2605, and 🌙 is U+1F319. There are currently over 149,000 assigned code points in Unicode 15.1, covering every character in every writing system in the world plus thousands of symbols and emoji.
How do I find what a character is called?
Paste it into the SymbolNow Unicode Character Inspector — it immediately shows the official Unicode name. For example, pasting ✦ reveals it’s called FOUR POINTED BLACK STAR (U+2726). Knowing the name lets you search for similar characters in the same Unicode block, look up font support, and reference it correctly in technical documentation.
Can the Inspector detect invisible characters?
Yes — this is one of its most valuable uses. Invisible characters like zero-width space (U+200B), non-breaking space (U+00A0), and soft hyphen (U+00AD) appear as blank space in normal text but show up as distinct character cards in the Inspector. If you’ve ever had text that “looks right” but behaves strangely in code or search, invisible characters are often the culprit — and the Inspector finds them immediately.
Is the Unicode Character Inspector free?
Completely free, with no account required and no usage limits. The Inspector is one of SymbolNow’s core free tools — open it, paste your character, get your results. No sign-up, no payment, no watermark on results. Try it now →
What’s the difference between UTF-8 and UTF-16?
UTF-8 and UTF-16 are two different ways of encoding Unicode characters as bytes in a file or memory. UTF-8 uses 1–4 bytes per character and is the dominant encoding on the web. UTF-16 uses 2 or 4 bytes and is common in Windows APIs and some programming languages. The Inspector shows both encodings for every character, which is useful when debugging character encoding issues across different systems.
Ready to inspect any character?
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Paste any symbol, emoji, letter, or mystery character and get a complete Unicode breakdown in under a second. Free forever, no account needed, works on every device.
🔍 Open Unicode Character Inspector →
Free tool · No sign-up · Works on mobile, tablet, and desktop