Invisible Character Remover

Some of the worst bugs are invisible ones. A password that fails with no explanation, a CSV column that will not match, an environment variable that is somehow wrong — and the cause is a character you cannot see. Our free tool to remove invisible characters finds them, tells you exactly what they are, and strips them out.

Most cleaners delete silently. This one reports first: every type of hidden character found, how many there are, its Unicode code point, and why it matters. That matters because the answer is often informative. A byte order mark means an encoding problem upstream. Non-breaking spaces mean the text came out of Word or a web page. A scattering of zero-width spaces through otherwise normal prose can mean the document was invisibly watermarked before it was shared with you — which is exactly what a zero width space remover is most often reached for.

It also flags bidirectional override characters, which can make text display in a different order from how it is actually stored — the mechanism behind trojan-source attacks in code. Those are always removed. Exotic spaces can either be normalised to ordinary spaces or left alone, your choice. Everything runs in your browser, which matters when the text you are inspecting is a credential or a confidential document. Pair it with the Text Cleaner for general formatting debris or Remove Line Breaks for text pasted out of a PDF.