Text Encoding / Mojibake Fixer
Turn question marks and stray accents back into readable text — privately, on your device.
Text Encoding / Mojibake Fixer
Garbled text (–, é, 空) means a file was saved in one encoding and read in another. Pick the source encoding and export a clean UTF-8 copy.
Preview
The decoded text preview appears here.
When to use this
Mojibake shows up when a file written in one character set is opened as another. Classic signs: é instead of “é”, – instead of “–”, or Chinese text turning into 空. It happens with CSVs exported on one OS and opened on another, web pages saved with the wrong charset, or logs from a server in a different locale. The fix is to re-read the original bytes with the correct encoding.
Worked example
A CSV from a Windows machine shows Palme d’été. You drop it in; the tool auto-detects Windows-1252 and decodes it to “Palme d’été”. Switch the source dropdown to confirm, then export a UTF-8 copy that any modern app reads correctly. For a Chinese file showing 空气, pick GBK and it resolves to “空调”.
What it can and can’t fix
It only works if the original bytes are intact — it re-interprets them, it doesn’t invent missing data. If a file was saved incorrectly and then re-saved (double-mangled), some characters are gone for good. It also won’t repair binary corruption; this is strictly for text encoding mismatches.
FAQ
What does “export as UTF-8” do? It writes the correctly decoded text into a new file tagged as UTF-8, the universal encoding most apps expect today.
My file still shows odd characters after export. The source encoding guess was probably wrong. Try each option in the dropdown — the preview updates live and the replacement-character count tells you which one is cleanest.
Is my file uploaded? No. Decoding happens in your browser; the bytes never leave the tab.