What's a zero-width character?

A Unicode code point with no width (U+200B, U+200C, U+200D, U+FEFF, …). They take up no visual space but count as characters — common culprits for 'this string is one byte longer than expected' bugs.

Non-breaking space (U+00A0). Looks like a normal space but doesn't break across lines. Some word processors auto-insert it after numbers and units; pasting that into JSON or code breaks things.

What do bidi marks do?

U+202A–U+202E (LRE / RLE / PDF / LRO / RLO) override the visual direction. They're useful for mixed-language text but a known phishing vector when sneaked into URLs or filenames.

Is the cleaning lossless?

Mostly — removing zero-width characters and normalizing line endings is safe for most text. Collapsing whitespace and trimming lines may change formatting you care about, so review before pasting back.

Invisible / Zero-Width Character Detector

Paste text and the tool highlights every whitespace and invisible Unicode character: regular spaces as middle-dots, tabs as arrows, newlines as pilcrows, NBSPs in amber, zero-width characters in red, and bidi / formatting marks in fuchsia. A summary lists every invisible code point it found, and a one-click clean removes them — handy for fixing broken JSON, mangled passwords, or copy-pasted code that won't compile.

—

Text

Legend

· Regular space
→ Tab
¶ Newline
ZW Zero-width character
␣ NBSP (U+00A0)
FMT Other invisible / formatting char

Visualized

HelloZWworld¶
This→line·has·a·tab.¶
Trailing·spaces·here.¶
···Leading·spaces·here.¶
A␣non-breaking␣space.¶
A00ELRM·and·a02ALRE·inside.¶
¶
A·blank·line·above.

Invisible characters found

U+200BZero-width space×1
U+0009Tab×1
U+00A0NBSP (non-breaking space)×2
U+200ELeft-to-right mark×1
U+202ALeft-to-right embedding×1

Clean options

Remove zero-width / format charsNormalize newlines to \nCollapse multiple spaces / NBSPsTrim trailing whitespace per line

Cleaned

Helloworld
This	line has a tab.
Trailing spaces here.
   Leading spaces here.
A non-breaking space.
A‎LRM and a‪LRE inside.

A blank line above.

How to use

Paste or type the text.
Read the visualization — coloured dots / arrows mark whitespace, ZW marks zero-width.
Read the 'found' list to see which Unicode points are hiding.
Toggle clean options and copy the cleaned version.

Frequently asked questions

What's a zero-width character?: A Unicode code point with no width (U+200B, U+200C, U+200D, U+FEFF, …). They take up no visual space but count as characters — common culprits for 'this string is one byte longer than expected' bugs.
What's NBSP?: Non-breaking space (U+00A0). Looks like a normal space but doesn't break across lines. Some word processors auto-insert it after numbers and units; pasting that into JSON or code breaks things.
What do bidi marks do?: U+202A–U+202E (LRE / RLE / PDF / LRO / RLO) override the visual direction. They're useful for mixed-language text but a known phishing vector when sneaked into URLs or filenames.
Is the cleaning lossless?: Mostly — removing zero-width characters and normalizing line endings is safe for most text. Collapsing whitespace and trimming lines may change formatting you care about, so review before pasting back.

Guides on this topic

Unicode Normalization and Invisible Characters Why two identical-looking strings can fail an equality check, what NFC, NFD, NFKC and NFKD actually do, which invisible characters hide in pasted text, and the rules that keep text handling safe.

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