URL Decode
Easily convert encoded URLs into readable text.
Encoded URL / Text Input
Decoded Text Output
Why Use This Tool? ✅
Fast & Accurate
Correctly decodes percent-encoded characters back into their original form.
Perfect for Developers
An essential tool for debugging URLs, testing API requests, and analyzing query strings.
User-Friendly Interface
A simple, clean two-panel layout makes decoding URLs effortless for everyone.
Great for Analysts
Easily clean up and read URLs from web traffic logs or marketing campaign data.
From Percent-Encoding to Plain Text: Understanding URL Decoding 🌐
A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is designed to be a standardized, readable address for resources on the internet. However, URLs have a limited set of allowed characters. When a URL needs to include a special character that is not in this set (like a space, a forward slash in a parameter, or a plus sign), that character must be encoded. URL decoding is the process of converting these encoded sequences back into their original, human-readable characters.
What is Percent-Encoding?
Percent-encoding, also known as URL encoding, works by replacing a reserved or non-ASCII character with a "%" sign, followed by the two-digit hexadecimal representation of that character's ASCII code.
Common examples include:
- A space becomes
%20 - A forward slash (
/) becomes%2F - A question mark (
?) becomes%3F - An ampersand (
&) becomes%26
Why is Decoding Necessary?
- Debugging: When a developer is working with a complex URL, especially one generated by a form or an API, the encoded string can be very difficult to read. Decoding it makes it easy to check if all the parameters and values are correct.
- Data Analysis: Web analytics tools often log the full, encoded URLs of visiting traffic. An analyst needs to decode these URLs to understand the search queries, campaign tags, and other parameters.
- Reading and Sharing: An encoded URL is ugly and hard to share. Decoding it makes it readable and understandable for humans.
This tool uses the browser's built-in, standardized decoding functions (decodeURIComponent) to provide a fast and highly accurate way to reverse percent-encoding, making any URL string instantly clear and readable.