Garbled Text (Mojibake) Fixer

Paste text that looks like café or don’t and this tool tries to restore the original characters. You can also re-save a text file in a different encoding.

Repair garbled text

Change a text file’s encoding

Drop files here or click to choose .txt · .csv · .srt · .html and other text files · multiple OK

    What is mojibake?

    Mojibake is the garbage you see when text saved in one character encoding is read with another. The classic case is UTF-8 text read as Windows-1252 (Latin-1): é becomes é, an apostrophe ’ becomes ’, and curly quotes turn into “ and â€.

    As long as no bytes were lost, the process can be reversed: the tool turns the garbled characters back into the original bytes and reads them correctly. It also handles text that was garbled twice (é).

    When it can’t be fixed

    • If the text contains � (the replacement character) or plain ? where letters should be, the original bytes were thrown away. Go back to the original file instead.
    • If a file opens garbled, use the file section: choose the encoding it was really saved in under "Read as", check the preview, then save it as UTF-8.

    FAQ

    Which encoding should I save as?

    UTF-8 for almost everything. Choose "UTF-8 (with BOM)" for files you will open in Excel or old Windows Notepad, and Windows-1252 only for legacy software that can’t read UTF-8.

    Is my text uploaded?

    No. Repair and conversion happen in your browser.