HTML Entity Encoder & Decoder, private by default

Why HTML entities exist

Some characters have special meaning in HTML. The less-than sign starts a tag, the greater-than sign ends one, quotes can close attributes, and ampersands start entity references.

Entities let you display those characters as text. For example, < can show a less-than sign in an article without turning the following words into an actual HTML tag.

When to encode or decode

Encode text when you want to show a snippet inside documentation, comments, support replies, tutorials, or code examples. Decode when you have copied source that contains entities and you need to read the original characters.

Encoding for display is different from sanitizing untrusted HTML. If users can submit markup to your application, use a trusted sanitizer and output-escaping strategy in your framework.

• Encode < and > before showing HTML examples
• Encode quotes before placing user text inside attributes
• Decode entities when reviewing copied source or escaped logs
• Use proper sanitization for user-generated HTML

Practical publishing workflow

Paste a snippet, choose encode, and copy the escaped result into a guide, issue, CMS field, or support answer where the HTML should appear as text.

If a snippet includes secrets, personal data, or private customer information, redact it before converting. Browser-only conversion reduces upload risk, but it does not decide whether the content is safe to share.