UTF-16 (16-bit Unicode Transformation Format) is a character encoding that supports all 1,112,064 [a] valid code points of Unicode. [1] The encoding is variable-length as code points are encoded with one or two 16-bit code units.

Explore the complete character list for UTF-16 encoding on FileFormat.Info.

Q: What is the difference between UCS-2 and UTF-16? UCS-2 is obsolete terminology which refers to a Unicode implementation up to Unicode 1.1, before surrogate code points and UTF-16 were added to Version 2.0 of the standard. This term should now be avoided.

UTF-16 is the native string encoding in Windows, Java, JavaScript, and .NET — making this tool essential for debugging file I/O, inter-process communication, and API payloads in those ecosystems.

UTF-8 uses one to four units of eight bits, and UTF-16 uses one or two units of 16 bits, to cover the entire Unicode of 21 bits maximum. Units use prefixes so that character boundaries can be spotted, and more units mean more prefixes that occupy bits.

UTF-16 is a character encoding standard for Unicode. It encodes each Unicode code point using either one or two code units. Each code unit is a 16-bit value.

Unicode Converter enables you to easily convert Unicode characters in UTF-16, UTF-8, and UTF-32 formats to their Unicode and decimal representations. In addition, you can percent encode/decode URL parameters and encode text to Base64.

Easily convert plain text into UTF-16 escape sequences or decode \u formatted strings back into readable text. This tool is designed for developers, programmers, and data analysts working with internationalization, Java, JavaScript, or legacy Windows systems.

UTF-16 (16-bit Unicode Transformation Format) is a character encoding that supports all 1,112,064 valid code points of Unicode.

UTF-16 is also a variable width encoding system where each character is encoded into a 2 to 4-byte unicode point. UTF-16 is used in Microsoft Windows OS and programming languages like Java