Mojibake Fixer & Text Encoding Repair
Repair garbled text such as Café, Français,
or ’. Compare alternative repairs, handle repeated
encoding mistakes, and copy or download the restored text.
Paste your garbled text
This tool focuses on common Western text that was originally UTF-8 but was interpreted as Windows-1252 or Latin-1. Repair suggestions are heuristic; always review the output before replacing important data.
Repair methods
Optional output cleanup
These options change the chosen candidate. They are not automatically assumed to be correct for every document.
Repair candidates
Candidate scores are heuristic indicators of common encoding artifacts, not probabilities or guarantees. Compare the choices and select the version that preserves your intended meaning.
Selected output
The top-ranked candidate is suggested as a starting point when the heuristic score improves. You can edit the output manually before copying or downloading it.
What is mojibake?
Mojibake is garbled text produced when bytes are decoded using the
wrong character encoding. For example, the word café may
appear as Café after UTF-8 bytes are interpreted using
a different character table.
UTF-8 encodes many characters with multiple bytes. If each of those bytes is treated as a separate character, the resulting text can look like random symbols, incorrect punctuation or extra accented letters.
Common examples
| Garbled text | Possible repair |
|---|---|
Café |
Café |
Français |
Français |
’ |
’ |
“Hello†|
“Hello”, depending on the original bytes |
é |
é, after multiple successful repair passes |
How to repair garbled text
- Paste the original text, or open a supported text file.
- Choose one or more repair methods and the maximum number of passes.
- Analyze the text to generate and rank possible repair candidates.
- Compare the candidates and select the one that matches the intended text.
- Apply any optional cleanup, check the output, and copy or download it.
Why multiple repair candidates matter
Character encodings are not always recoverable by guessing. Some text might contain legitimate accented characters, symbols or mixed-language content. A transformation that fixes one word may damage another. Comparing alternatives is safer than silently replacing the entire document with a single guess.
Can this tool fix every character-encoding error?
No. This tool focuses on common Western cases involving UTF-8 text misread as Windows-1252 or ISO-8859-1. Some older East Asian encoding mistakes require different methods. If the source has already replaced unknown characters with ordinary question marks or replacement symbols, the lost information may no longer be recoverable.
Does the tool upload my text?
The transformations and candidate generation run in your browser. This page does not require a server-based repair API. Be mindful that other services, browser extensions or unrelated scripts on a website can have their own data-handling behavior.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my CSV or subtitle file contain strange symbols?
One possibility is that a program interpreted the file using the wrong character encoding. The same symptom can have other causes, so inspect the output and keep a copy of the original.
Will Unicode normalization repair mojibake?
Not by itself. NFC normalization combines canonically equivalent sequences, but it cannot generally reverse an incorrect byte-decoding operation. That is why normalization is an optional, separate step.
Can I use the tool with source code?
Yes, but compare results carefully. Even a seemingly harmless text transformation can change string literals, identifiers, comments or encoded data. Keep the original source and review all changes.
Can I repair a file that displays question marks instead of letters?
If the original character bytes have already been replaced with question marks, the missing characters cannot reliably be recovered from those question marks alone. Restore from an original or backup where possible.