HTML Entity Encoder/Decoder
Paste text below to encode reserved characters into safe HTML entities, or decode HTML entities back into plain readable text.
How to Use the HTML Entity Encoder/Decoder
- Type or paste your text into the input box.
- Click "Encode" to convert characters like
&,<,>,"and'into their safe named HTML entities. - Click "Decode" to convert HTML entities (named or numeric) back into their original characters.
- Click "Copy" to copy the result to your clipboard.
Why Use This Tool?
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. Encoding uses a small internal character map and decoding uses a safe, detached DOM element trick to resolve entities — both run entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to a server, which is useful when working with draft page content or user-submitted text you'd rather not pass through an external service.
Why do characters like < and & need to be encoded?
In HTML, characters such as <, > and & have special meaning (they start tags or entities). If you want to display them literally — for example showing a "less than" sign in a paragraph — you must encode them as <, > and & so the browser renders them as text instead of interpreting them as markup.
Is decoding HTML entities safe?
Yes — decoding here uses a detached, never-rendered DOM element purely to resolve entity codes back to characters; the decoded text is only ever placed into a plain text output box, not executed or rendered as live HTML, so there's no script-injection risk from using this tool.
Who uses an HTML entity encoder/decoder?
Developers preparing user-generated content for safe display, technical writers documenting HTML/XML syntax examples, and anyone debugging a page where entities are showing up literally instead of rendering correctly.