What Is Remove Invisible Characters?
Remove Invisible Characters detects and strips hidden Unicode characters from your text that aren't visible on screen but can cause unexpected behavior in code, documents, and web content. It identifies zero-width spaces, byte order marks, directional overrides, control characters, and more.
Results appear instantly as you type or paste. This tool runs entirely in your browser — no text is sent to any server.
How to Use This Tool
Paste or Upload Text
Type directly into the input area, paste content with Ctrl+V, or upload/drag a .txt file to inspect.
Review Results
The tool instantly scans and lists every invisible character found, showing its position, Unicode code point, and name.
Copy or Download Cleaned Text
Use Copy Cleaned to get the text with all invisible characters removed, or Download Cleaned to save it as a file.
Clear and Start Over
Use the Clear button to reset the input and inspect a new piece of text.
Characters Detected
Zero-Width Characters
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Zero Width Space (U+200B), Zero Width Non-Joiner (U+200C), Zero Width Joiner (U+200D), and Word Joiner (U+2060). These take up no visible space but affect text processing, copy-paste behavior, and can break string comparisons.
Byte Order Mark (BOM)
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U+FEFF is used at the start of text files to indicate byte order. When it appears elsewhere in text, it acts as an invisible character that can cause parsing issues in code and data files.
Directional Overrides
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Left-to-Right Mark (U+200E), Right-to-Left Mark (U+200F), and embedding/override characters (U+202A–U+202E). These control text direction and can be used to disguise malicious file names or URLs.
Control Characters
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ASCII control codes (U+0000–U+001F, U+007F) including NULL, backspace, tab, carriage return, and others. These can cause unexpected behavior in text processing and display.
Non-Breaking & Special Spaces
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Non-Breaking Space (U+00A0) looks like a regular space but prevents line breaks. Soft Hyphen (U+00AD) is invisible but indicates a possible hyphenation point.
Invisible Math Operators
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Function Application (U+2061), Invisible Times (U+2062), Invisible Separator (U+2063), and Invisible Plus (U+2064). Used in mathematical markup but invisible in normal text.
Who Is This Tool For?
Developers
Find hidden characters causing bugs in source code, config files, JSON, and database entries.
Security Analysts
Detect directional override attacks, homoglyph injections, and hidden text in suspicious content.
Content Editors
Clean up invisible characters introduced by copy-pasting from websites, PDFs, or word processors.
Data Engineers
Identify invisible characters causing data quality issues in CSV files, API responses, and ETL pipelines.
QA Testers
Verify that user input handling correctly strips or rejects invisible characters in applications.
SEO Specialists
Detect hidden text or invisible characters in web content that could affect search engine indexing.
Tips for Removing Invisible Characters
Check copy-pasted text
Text copied from web pages, PDFs, and word processors often contains invisible characters like NBSP, ZWSP, or BOM.
Inspect code that won't compile
If code looks correct but produces errors, invisible characters in variable names or strings may be the cause.
Watch for directional overrides
Malicious files may use RTL overrides to disguise extensions (e.g., making .exe appear as .doc).
Clean data before processing
Strip invisible characters from CSV, JSON, or API data before importing to prevent parsing failures.
Use Copy Cleaned for safe text
The Copy Cleaned button gives you the text with all detected invisible characters removed, ready to use.
Check string comparison failures
If two strings look identical but don't match, invisible characters like ZWSP or BOM between characters may be the cause.
Privacy & Security
This tool runs 100% in your browser. Your text is never uploaded to any server. It is stored only in your browser's local storage so it persists when you refresh the page.
You can clear it at any time using the “Clear” button. No cookies are used, no analytics track your text content, and no third-party services have access to what you type.