Invisible Character Cleanup
Remove Weird Unicode Characters Online
Remove invisible characters, zero-width spaces, non-breaking spaces and odd Unicode marks from text copied from Word, websites and apps.
Workspace
Paste text with hidden Unicode, copy clean output
Core cleanup
Target hidden Unicode, not encoding repair
Remove weird Unicode symbols
Clean replacement marks, stray bytes and odd copied symbols.
Remove zero-width characters
Strip zero-width spaces, joiners and hidden markers.
Normalize quotation marks
Convert curly quotes into predictable plain quotes when needed.
Remove invisible characters
Strip zero-width spaces, joiners, soft hyphens and markers.
Remove non-breaking spaces
Replace NBSPs with normal spaces for editors and forms.
Repair corrupted punctuation
Normalize unusual apostrophes, quotes, dashes and ellipses.
Quick cleanup modes
Choose the Unicode problem you see
Before and after
Real Unicode cleanup examples
Non-breaking spaces
Before
Text with strange spacesAfter
Text with strange spacesCurly quotation marks
Before
“Hello World”After
"Hello World"Soft hyphens
Before
copypaste textAfter
copypaste textLigatures
Before
The financial report contains unusual ligatures.After
The financial report contains unusual ligatures.Invisible Unicode
Before
Text containing hidden zero-width charactersAfter
Clean visible text onlyBackground
Why strange Unicode characters appear
Strange Unicode characters often appear when text is copied from word processors, websites, PDFs, chat apps or publishing tools that preserve invisible layout marks. A normal-looking sentence can contain zero-width spaces, non-breaking spaces, soft hyphens or direction markers that break search, forms and data imports.
This tool is for removing those hidden or unusual Unicode characters. If your text looks like João or Français, use Fix Mojibake Text instead because that is an encoding problem.
Artifacts
Common Unicode artifacts
BOM markers can sit at the start of a file, zero-width spaces can hide between words, non-breaking spaces can prevent normal wrapping, and smart quotes or ligatures can break search, forms and data imports.
This tool focuses on those practical artifacts: invisible markers, non-breaking spaces, malformed smart quotes, corrupted punctuation and OCR Unicode noise.
Method
How Unicode cleanup works
The browser-side cleanup pipeline applies Unicode normalization, removes invisible characters, strips BOM markers, standardizes punctuation and normalizes spacing without sending your text to a server.
Use it before pasting text into CMS fields, spreadsheets, tickets, forms, search indexes, plain-text files or document cleanup workflows.
Related tools
Continue the text repair workflow
Need broader cleanup?
Use the AI Cleanup Tool when generated text also includes Markdown, bullets or chat formatting.
Copied text still looks messy?
Use Fix Copy-Paste Formatting for layout, spacing and formatting artifacts beyond Unicode corruption.
FAQ
Unicode cleanup questions
Why do strange characters appear in copied text?
Word processors, websites, PDFs, email clients and document conversions can introduce hidden Unicode marks, non-breaking spaces and unusual punctuation.
How do I remove weird Unicode symbols?
Paste the text, keep the Unicode cleanup options enabled and click Clean Unicode Text to repair common artifacts.
What are invisible Unicode characters?
They are hidden marks such as zero-width spaces, joiners, direction markers, soft hyphens and BOM markers.
Can this fix mojibake encoding problems?
Use Fix Mojibake Text for encoding problems such as João or Français. This page is for invisible and unusual Unicode characters.
Does this tool remove zero-width spaces?
Yes. Enable Remove invisible Unicode to strip zero-width spaces and related hidden characters.