Question 1

What does the URL encoder/decoder do?

Accepted Answer

It encodes special characters for safe use in URLs (percent-encoding) or decodes percent-encoded strings back to text. All processing is client-side.

Question 2

What characters need URL encoding?

Accepted Answer

Special characters like spaces, &, =, ?, and non-ASCII characters need to be encoded for URLs.

Question 3

What is percent encoding?

Accepted Answer

Percent encoding replaces unsafe characters with a % followed by two hexadecimal digits.

Question 4

Is my text sent to a server?

Accepted Answer

No. Encoding and decoding run in your browser. Your text is never uploaded or stored.

Question 5

When should I use URL encode?

Accepted Answer

Use it when building query strings, putting user input in URLs, or decoding received parameters for debugging.

Question 6

Why is my encoded string double-encoded?

Accepted Answer

Encoding an already-encoded string turns % into %25, etc. Decode once first, then encode again only if needed.

URL Encoder/Decoder

Frequently Asked Questions