Whitespace Visualizer
Reveal hidden spaces, tabs, line breaks and invisible Unicode characters.
- Free
- Real-time
- Runs locally
View
Opening a file or pasting keeps Windows (CRLF) and classic Mac (CR) line endings exactly, even as you edit. New lines you type use LF.
Spaces
0
Tabs
0
Line breaks
0
No line breaks
Hidden characters
0
Invisible or unusual
Visible whitespace
Your text appears here with whitespace made visible.
Findings
No hidden characters, trailing spaces or mixed line endings found.
Make the invisible visible. Paste any text and every space is shown as ·, every tab as → and every line break as ↵ (or a CRLF label for Windows line breaks), so you can see exactly what is in it. Trailing spaces at line ends are highlighted.
The visualizer also finds characters that cause hard-to-spot bugs: zero-width spaces, non-breaking spaces, byte order marks, soft hyphens, bidirectional control characters and stray control codes. Each one is listed with its Unicode code point and where it first appears. Everything runs in your browser.
How to find hidden characters
- STEP 01
Paste or open your text
Paste text, or open a file to keep its original Windows or Unix line endings.
- STEP 02
Look at the marked view
Spaces, tabs and line breaks are drawn as symbols; invisible and unusual characters are highlighted in red.
- STEP 03
Check the findings
Review each hidden character with its code point and first position, then fix it with our Text Cleaner if needed.
Features
Spaces, tabs and line breaks
See every space as ·, every tab as → and every line break, and switch each marker on or off.
LF, CRLF and CR detection
Find out whether a file uses Unix, Windows or classic Mac line endings, or a risky mix of them.
Invisible characters
Zero-width spaces and joiners, word joiners, byte order marks and soft hyphens are labelled by name.
Unusual spaces
Non-breaking, thin, em, en and ideographic spaces that look like normal spaces are highlighted.
Bidi and control characters
Right-to-left overrides and other direction controls, plus control codes like U+0007, are flagged.
Trailing whitespace
Spaces and tabs at the end of lines are highlighted and counted, with the first line they appear on.
Why hidden characters matter
Text copied from web pages, PDFs, chat apps and word processors often contains characters you cannot see. A non-breaking space can make a search or a spreadsheet formula fail, a zero-width space can break a password, URL or variable name, and a byte order mark at the start of a file can confuse scripts and CSV imports.
Bidirectional control characters can even make code display differently from how it runs. Mixed line endings cause noisy diffs and failing scripts. Seeing these characters is the first step to removing them.
Frequently asked questions
What does each symbol mean?
· is a space, → a tab and ↵ a line feed (LF). Windows line breaks are labelled CRLF and old Mac line breaks CR. Unusual spaces and invisible characters are shown as red labels with their standard abbreviations, such as NBSP (no-break space), THSP (thin space), ZWSP (zero-width space), BOM or RLO.
How do I know if my text uses CRLF or LF?
Open the file with “Open file” or paste it, and the Line breaks card shows LF, CRLF, CR or Mixed. Text typed directly into the box always uses LF, because browsers normalise line breaks in text fields.
Are emoji flagged as hidden characters?
No. The zero-width joiners inside combined emoji such as 👨👩👧 are expected and are not counted. A zero-width joiner between ordinary letters is reported.
How do I remove the hidden characters?
Use our Text Cleaner to remove invisible characters and normalise spaces and line endings, or Remove Extra Spaces to fix trailing and doubled spaces. Then paste the result here again to confirm.
Can I share what I found?
Yes. “Copy marked text” copies a version with the symbols written out, such as a·b→c, [NBSP] and [ZWSP], which you can paste into a bug report or chat.
Is my text uploaded?
No. Files are opened locally and all scanning happens in your browser.