URL Decoder

What the URL Decoder tool does

This turns the percent codes in an encoded web address back into the plain characters they stand for. Paste in the encoded text, press Convert, and copy or download the result. For example, %20 becomes a space and %26 becomes an ampersand, so a string like hello%20world reads back as hello world. It is the reverse of the URL Encoder tool, which is also where the fuller explanation of percent-encoding lives.

It runs in your browser, so nothing you enter is uploaded.

How to use it

1. Paste your encoded text. Enter the string containing the percent codes.
2. Set the plus-sign option if you need it. There is a choice for treating a plus sign as a space, explained below.
3. Press Convert. The decoded text appears, ready to Copy or Download.

How it reads the percent codes

The work happens at each percent sign. A percent code is a % followed by two hexadecimal digits, and those two digits are the value of one byte. The tool reads each code, works out the byte value, and turns it back into the character it represents, leaving the ordinary characters around it untouched. So %20, read as the number 32, comes back as a space, and the rest of the text reassembles around it. There is also the plus-sign convention to handle: in a query string a plus can stand for a space, so the option lets you decode it that way when the text came from a query that used that style.

When you would use it

You meet percent-encoded text whenever you look closely at a URL. Copy a link after running a search, or pull a web address out of a log, an email, or an API response, and the interesting part is often a run of percent codes where spaces, punctuation, and other characters used to be. Pasting it here turns it back into the readable text underneath, which is useful for seeing what a link actually contains, reading a query value, or copying the real text out cleanly.

Going the other way

If you have plain text and want to make it safe for a URL, that is the opposite job, handled by the URL Encoder tool. This one turns percent codes into characters; that one turns characters into percent codes. And note that this is URL decoding, not HTML decoding, which turns the entities found in web pages back into characters and is handled by the HTML Decode tool.

Questions people ask

How do I turn percent codes back into text?

Paste the encoded text here and press Convert. Each percent code is read as a byte value and turned back into its character, while the rest of the text is left as it is.

Why did a plus sign turn into a space, or not?

In a query string a plus can mean a space. The option controls whether the tool treats it that way. Turn it on for text that came from a query using the plus convention.

Is this the same as HTML decoding?

No. This turns the percent codes from web addresses back into characters. HTML decoding turns the entities used in web pages back into characters, which is the HTML Decode tool's job.

References

1. Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., Masinter, L. (2005). RFC 3986: Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986
2. WHATWG. URL Standard. https://url.spec.whatwg.org/