HTML Escape & Unescape - Convert HTML Entities Online

Introduction

The Toolibex HTML Escape & Unescape tool can be used to escape and unescape text containing special characters.

This tool is helpful for web developers, editors of HTML pages and students learning about HTML, programming and text formatting. It can be used whenever there is a need to either display or understand text containing special characters.

Use the tool if you need to unescape HTML entities or escape text for use in an HTML page or another context where escaping is required.

About the Toolibex HTML Escape & Unescape Tool

The Toolibex HTML Escape & Unescape tool is an online tool that can be used to either escape or unescape text containing special characters.

The main operations of this tool are the following:

• Escaping special characters in text by replacing them with HTML entities
• Unescaping special characters by replacing HTML entities with characters

Escaping in HTML means that text with special characters, as explained above, is transformed so that the browser renders the text rather than interpreting the special characters.

For instance, the less-than sign < can be escaped into < .

Similarly, other special characters can also be escaped. Escaping can also be done selectively - only some special characters may need to be escaped.

Unescaping in HTML means that text with escaped special characters is converted back to the original text.

For instance, the text < can be unescaped into < .

There are a number of possible reasons why you want to unescape HTML entities.

Reasons for using the HTML Escape & Unescape tool include the following:

• Display HTML code correctly
• Escaping text for use in HTML
• Unescaping HTML entities to characters
• Investigate escaped text, for instance if you copy text from a website

Other reasons may include displaying text with mathematical symbols, punctuation or other special characters, and investigation of escaping issues that arise when developing websites.

The HTML escape tool is designed to make it easy to escape characters and unescape characters.

However, it is important to keep in mind that escaping depends on context.

That is, text with escaped characters has to be placed somewhere specific for it to be displayed or processed correctly. Escaping text with special characters is not sufficient for handling all situations.

For instance, escaping is different for HTML text and HTML attribute values, and other contexts.

How HTML Escape and Unescape Works

HTML specification defines named character references (e.g. &) and numeric character references (e.g. <).

These define how certain characters can be represented with named entities and numeric entities. The browser is able to interpret these entities and display the characters they represent.

1. HTML Escaping

Escaping replaces certain special characters with their entity representation.

Special characters that can be escaped include < , > , & , " , ' and other characters.

Which characters get escaped and how they are escaped depends on the particular escaping tool.

For instance, some tools escape < into < while other tools can escape it into < .

Other tools might not escape < at all, or might only escape < under particular conditions.

Escaping is useful when you want to display HTML code, for instance.

Without escaping characters like < and > , the browser would interpret these sequences as HTML markup rather than display them as text.

2. HTML Unescaping

Unescaping replaces certain HTML entities (e.g. &) with the characters that they represent (e.g. & ). Which entities get replaced depends on the particular unescaping tool.

For instance, some unescaping tools will replace & with & , while other unescaping tools might also replace < with < , and so on.

Unescaping is useful when you want to see what text certain entities represent.

For instance, if you have some web page copy with text that has entities in it, unescaping entities will display the text. Similarly, unescaping entities can be used to help analyse text.

3. Named and Numeric HTML Entities

There are different ways to represent entities.

Named entities use a name to represent a character, e.g. © represents © . Numeric entities use numbers to represent characters, e.g. © also represents © .

Both named and numeric entities can be used to represent characters that cannot be easily typed or displayed.

A browser can interpret named entities and numeric entities and display the characters they represent.

In most cases, the choice between using named entities or numeric entities is arbitrary. However, some characters cannot be represented with named entities, and have to be represented with numeric entities instead.

How to Understand HTML Escape & Unescape Results

You may want to examine the results produced by the HTML Escape & Unescape tool.

Here are some things to consider:

Escaped Text

Escaped text has escaped characters. These are characters that have been replaced with entities.

For instance, here is some text:

Welcome

After escaping, the text will look like this:

<p>Welcome</p>

Escaping is useful if you want to display this text as HTML code or as markup. If this was placed in an HTML text context, the browser would display the text Welcome

rather than display the text inside the paragraph element. This makes it possible to show HTML code on a web page.

Unescaped Text

Unescaped text has unescaped characters. These are characters that have been replaced with their representation.

For instance, here is some text:

Tom & Jerry

After unescaping, the text will look like this:

Tom & Jerry

Unescaping is useful if you want to see what text certain entities represent. This can be useful if you want to analyse text that has entities in it.

Why HTML Escape & Unescape Results Might Be Different

Depending on the tool, certain characters may or may not be escaped. Certain entities may also be unescaped or not unescaped.

For instance, some escaping tools might also escape " while other escaping tools might not escape " .

Both results might be correct, depending on the context where the text is to be placed.

Escaping text more than once may also produce different results.

For instance, if you have < and you escape it again, you will get < . Then, if you unescape this text, you will get < rather than < . This means that entities that have already been escaped need to be unescaped first.

Examples of HTML Escaping and Unescaping

Example 1 - Display HTML Code on a Webpage

Suppose that you are writing a tutorial and you want to display the following code snippet:

Important

When you place this text into an HTML text context, the browser will attempt to interpret this as HTML code. This means that the word 'Important' will appear in bold font instead of displaying the HTML code.

To display the HTML code, you can escape the < and > characters:

Important

This will make sure that the HTML code is displayed as text. If this text is placed in an appropriate HTML text context, the browser will display the HTML code rather than interpreting it as HTML markup.

Example 2 - Convert Encoded Text into Readable Content

Suppose that you have the following string:

R&D Department

You can unescape this text, which will convert the & into & :

R&D Department

This can be useful if you want to see what text a particular string represents.

Example 3 - Handle Comparison Symbols

Consider the following expression:

5 < 10

This can appear in a tutorial or in a technical document. The expression represents a mathematical expression 5 < 10.

When you want to display this expression using HTML, you need to make sure that the < character is not interpreted as HTML markup.

You can escape the < character:

5 < 10

This way, the browser will display the < symbol rather than interpreting it as HTML markup. It will do this if the text is placed in an appropriate HTML text context.

Example 4 - React's Unescaped Entity Warning

When developing React applications, you may sometimes see a warning similar to this:

html entities must be escaped react no-unescaped-entities

When this warning appears, it means that the ESLint rule react/no-unescaped-entities has been triggered. This rule detects certain unescaped characters in text nodes.

For instance, quotation marks or apostrophes may trigger this warning, depending on the context. To fix this warning, you would need to escape the particular character that triggered the warning.

However, the fix needs to be applied to the particular source code that triggered the warning. This means that you cannot necessarily just escape all characters in the source file. A tool like the HTML Escape & Unescape tool can be used to escape characters. However, it does not address all potential issues with the react/no-unescaped-entities rule.

Example 5 - Decode a Copyright Entity

Suppose that you have the following string:

© 2026 Example Company

You can unescape this text, which will convert the © into © :

© 2026 Example Company

This can be useful if you want to see what a particular string represents.

Tips for Using an HTML Escape & Unescape Tool

Here are some tips that can help you to get the most out of an HTML escape tool:

• Determine what context the escaped or unescaped text should be used in. Escaping special characters in text works differently in HTML text, HTML attribute values, JavaScript string values, and URLs.
• When displaying untrusted text as HTML text, always escape untrusted text with the appropriate method. This makes it less likely that the text will contain dangerous HTML markup.
• You should avoid repeating escaping operations on the same text. Escaping special characters more than once will turn entities into visible entity text. For instance, < would be converted to <.
• Always make sure that unescaped text is what you expect it to be. Make sure that the text does not contain any unexpected characters. This is especially important if you are dealing with long strings.
• When dealing with React lint warnings, make sure that you understand what character is causing the issue. The react/no-unescaped-entities rule affects JSX text nodes and certain characters.
• When working with HTML texts, always make sure that you are using an appropriate HTML parser. HTML entity conversion does not validate HTML code or make sure that it is correctly formatted.
• If the text that you are trying to unescape or escape contains entity text that you want to keep, make sure that you are not modifying it. On the other hand, if you want to unescape text make sure that you are actually doing that.
• HTML escaping is only a part of the security equation. Escaping text will not make it safe to use in all possible contexts.