Remove Blank Characters
Strip invisible Unicode characters like zero‑width spaces, non‑breaking spaces, and byte order marks from your text. These hidden characters can sneak in when you copy from PDFs, websites, or word processors, causing formatting or parsing problems. With this tool you can clean them all in one click. No signup, no uploads — everything runs right in your browser.
Why use this Remove Blank Characters tool?
Invisible Unicode characters like zero‑width spaces (U+200B), non‑breaking spaces (U+00A0), and byte order marks (U+FEFF) can wreak havoc on your text. They may cause search failures, line‑break issues, or unexpected behavior in code. Our tool detects and removes these hidden troublemakers, optionally converting non‑breaking spaces to normal spaces so your words stay separated.
- Zero‑width characters – removes zero‑width space (U+200B), zero‑width non‑joiner (U+200C), zero‑width joiner (U+200D), word joiner (U+2060), and BOM (U+FEFF).
- Non‑breaking spaces – can be replaced with a standard space (U+0020) to prevent words from merging while still cleaning up the invisible formatting.
- Instant & private – processing happens entirely in your browser; your data never leaves your device.
- One‑click cleanup – just paste, check the options, and the cleaned text appears instantly.
How to remove blank characters (step‑by‑step)
1. Paste your text
Drop any block of text that may contain invisible blanks into the left box. (Even if you can't see them, they're often there!)
2. Choose cleaning options
Enable removal of zero‑width characters to delete them entirely. Enable non‑breaking space replacement to turn them into regular spaces.
3. Get clean text
The sanitized text appears on the right. All invisible characters are gone, and non‑breaking spaces are now regular spaces (if you chose to replace them).
4. Copy or download
Use the buttons to copy the result to clipboard or save it as a .txt file.
Example: before and after
| Input (contains zero‑width space and NBSP) | Output (zero‑width removed, NBSP replaced) |
|---|---|
| HelloWorld (the space before the parenthesis is non‑breaking) | HelloWorld (NBSP became regular space) |
Common use cases
- Copy‑paste from PDFs: PDFs often insert zero‑width spaces around ligatures or line breaks.
- Word processor exports: Non‑breaking spaces are used to keep words together, but they confuse plain‑text systems.
- Code cleanup: Remove invisible characters that break syntax or cause mysterious bugs.
- Data import: Sanitize text before loading into databases that don't support Unicode control characters.
- Search and indexing: Ensure invisible characters don't stop search engines from matching your content.
Pro tips
- The tool also removes the byte order mark (BOM, U+FEFF) which appears at the start of some UTF‑8 files and causes problems in scripts.
- After cleaning, you can further process the text with our Whitespace Cleaner to normalize multiple spaces.
- If you need to keep non‑breaking spaces for formatting but still want to remove zero‑width characters, simply uncheck "Replace non‑breaking spaces".
- For a complete text overhaul, combine this tool with Text Cleaner which bundles many cleaning options.