URL encoding (percent encoding) replaces characters that are not safe in URLs with a percent sign followed by two hex digits. This tool uses decodeURIComponent() to convert these sequences back to readable text. Common encodings: %20 = space, %3D = =, %26 = &.
Decode percent-encoded URL strings — converts %20, %3D and all encoded characters.. No account needed — all processing happens locally in your browser and your input is never transmitted.
Double-encoded strings (where %25 is itself decoded to %, revealing another layer of escapes) can be detected and unwrapped in a single click. Malformed input — a stray % without hex digits, or invalid UTF-8 — produces a clear error rather than a silently corrupt result.
%20 is the universal percent-encoding for a space and works everywhere. + is a space only in application/x-www-form-urlencoded (HTML form bodies and query strings). Toggle the form-encoding option to switch behaviour.
It uses the browser’s decodeURIComponent under the hood, which correctly assembles multibyte UTF-8 sequences (%C3%A9 → é, %F0%9F%98%80 → 😀) into proper Unicode code points.
That happens when a % is followed by something other than two hex digits, or when the byte sequence isn’t valid UTF-8. The original string is left in place and an error message appears so you can spot the bad position.
No — decoding happens entirely in your browser via the built-in decodeURIComponent.
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