Escape / Unescape

Escape and unescape HTML, JSON, backslash, shell and unicode strings.

Works offline Native desktop macOS & Windows
Escape / Unescape
What it does

Pasting text into JSON, a shell command or an HTML attribute breaks as soon as a quote or newline appears. The Escape / Unescape tool converts text to and from five common escaping styles in one place. It runs locally, which matters when the text is a token, a command or customer data.

HTML entities

Escape &, <, >, double quotes and single quotes to entities, or decode entities back to plain text.

JSON strings

Produce the contents of a JSON string with newlines and quotes escaped, or parse an escaped string back. Invalid input shows the parser error.

Backslash sequences

Convert backslashes, newlines, carriage returns and tabs to \\, \n, \r and \t, and back.

Shell quoting

Wrap text in POSIX single quotes, escaping embedded single quotes, so it is safe as one shell argument.

Unicode escapes

Turn non-ASCII characters into \uXXXX sequences, and decode both \uXXXX and \u{...} forms.

Chain conversions

Use the output as the next input to apply several conversions in a row, and copy the result with one click.

FAQ

How does shell quoting work here?

The text is wrapped in single quotes and each embedded single quote becomes '\''. This is POSIX-style quoting and works in sh, bash and zsh, but not in Windows cmd or PowerShell.

Does the JSON mode include the surrounding quotes?

No. It escapes only the contents of the string, so you paste the result between your own quotes.

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