About the HTML Encode / Decode
HTML encoding converts characters that have special meaning in HTML — like <, >, &, and quotes — into their entity equivalents (<, >, &, ") so that text can be safely displayed inside a web page without being interpreted as markup. This tool encodes plain text into safe HTML entities, or decodes existing entities back into their original characters.
This is essential for web developers displaying user-generated content safely (preventing broken layouts or basic injection issues), technical writers embedding code snippets inside HTML documentation, and anyone debugging why a page shows literal tags instead of rendered content — or the opposite, why entities like &amp; are showing up doubled.
To use the tool, paste your text into the input box and choose Encode or Decode. In Encode mode, characters like <script> automatically become <script>, which browsers will display as visible text rather than executing it as a tag. In Decode mode, entities such as &, ©, or numeric entities like A are converted back into their actual characters (&, ©, A).
For example, encoding the string <b>Hello & "World"</b> produces <b>Hello & "World"</b> — safe to insert directly into an HTML document as visible text rather than as a bold-formatted, executed tag. Decoding that same string returns the original text exactly.
A common mistake is encoding text that will be inserted using a framework's text-binding feature (like React's {variable} syntax or Vue's mustache syntax) — these frameworks already escape text automatically, so manually HTML-encoding it first would cause double-encoding and users would see literal &amp; on the page. Only use manual encoding when you're building raw HTML strings yourself (like generating an HTML email or static template) rather than relying on a framework's built-in escaping.
Tip: this tool is a great way to quickly display code snippets or example markup inside a blog post or documentation page — encode the snippet once, paste the entities into your page's HTML source, and browsers will render it exactly as typed rather than trying to execute it. It's also useful for quickly decoding scraped or copy-pasted web content that still contains literal entity codes instead of readable symbols.