Text Encoding Converter
Convert a text file between UTF-8, UTF-16 LE/BE (with or without BOM), ISO-8859-1 and Windows-1252 in the browser — encoding detected, BOM and line endings set.
The detected source encoding and BOM, the line-ending mix, the decoded text, byte counts in and out, non-ASCII and replaced characters, and the converted file to download.
Example: A file starting FF FE is UTF-16 LE with a BOM; "café" saved as Windows-1252 (63 61 66 E9) becomes 63 61 66 C3 A9 in UTF-8; "€" cannot be ISO-8859-1 and is replaced by "?" and counted.
Bytes to text
and back, with a name.
How the source encoding is detected, what a BOM is, and what happens to characters a target cannot hold.
Detection
A byte-order mark decides first: EF BB BF is UTF-8, FF FE UTF-16 little-endian, FE FF big-endian. Without one, bytes that validate as strict UTF-8 are UTF-8 (a random Western text almost never validates by accident); an even-length file with zero bytes at every second position is UTF-16; anything else is taken as Windows-1252, the usual "ANSI" of Western files, which you can override with ISO-8859-1 or a fixed choice.
Writing
UTF-8 (the web default) with or without a BOM, UTF-16 in either byte order with or without one, or ISO-8859-1. A UTF-8 BOM helps some Windows programs — Excel opening a CSV — and breaks shell scripts and JSON parsers; the page adds it only when asked. Characters outside ISO-8859-1 become "?" and are counted so the loss is visible. Line endings are reported (LF, CRLF, CR, mixed) and can be normalised.
Limits
Other legacy code pages (Windows-1251, Shift_JIS, GB2312 …) are not offered — they would need their own tables and a language guess. Files are processed in memory in the browser; very large files are best converted with a command-line tool. Nothing leaves the browser; the same four anonymous usage counts as the rest of the site apply.
SOURCES
- Detection: byte-order mark, then strict UTF-8 validation, then the zero-byte pattern of UTF-16, else Windows-1252; encodings per the WHATWG Encoding Standard and ISO/IEC 8859-1
Last reviewed 21 September 2026. How results are checked: How we verify.