URL Decoder Tool
Convert encoded URLs back to their original readable format instantly
About URL Decoding
What is URL Decoding?
URL decoding is the process of converting percent-encoded characters in a URL back to their original form. For example, "%20" becomes a space character, and "%3F" becomes a question mark.
Why Use Our Tool?
Our URL decoder is fast, accurate, and works entirely in your browser. No data is sent to servers, ensuring complete privacy for your sensitive URLs and parameters.
Common Uses
Developers use URL decoding to debug web applications, analyze query parameters, and understand encoded data in URLs received from APIs or user input.
Understanding URL Encoding and Decoding
URL encoding, also known as percent-encoding, is a mechanism for encoding information in a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). Certain characters in a URL must be encoded to be valid and to avoid interpretation as special URL characters.
How URL Decoding Works
When a URL is encoded, unsafe ASCII characters are replaced with a "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits representing the character's ASCII value. Our decoder reverses this process by:
- Identifying percent-encoded sequences (% followed by two hex digits)
- Converting these sequences back to their original characters
- Preserving all other characters in the URL
When to Decode URLs
You should decode URLs when:
- Analyzing query parameters from a web request
- Debugging API calls that return encoded URLs
- Reading encoded URLs from logs or analytics
- Processing user-submitted URLs that may be encoded
URL Decoder FAQs
URLs encode characters that either have special meanings in URLs (like ?, &, =, /) or are outside the ASCII character set. This includes spaces (encoded as %20), quotation marks, and non-English characters.
Our tool performs decoding entirely in your browser, so your URLs never leave your device. However, be cautious when decoding URLs from untrusted sources as they might contain malicious content.
Some characters in URLs may be intentionally encoded multiple times (double-encoded). Try decoding the URL again. If parts remain encoded, they might be encoded for a specific purpose by the sending application.
Yes! Our tool can decode complete URLs including all parameters. It will properly decode both the main URL path and any query parameters or fragments.
URL encoding uses percent signs (%) with hexadecimal codes, while HTML encoding uses ampersands (&) with entity names or numbers. They serve different purposes and require different decoding approaches.