Free Unicode Character Finder – Search Symbols & Code Points

How to Find a Unicode Character and Read Its Codes

A Unicode character finder lets you search for a symbol by name and hands you every form you might need to use it: the glyph itself to copy, the code point to reference, the HTML entity for web pages, the CSS escape for stylesheets, and the JavaScript escape for source code. Instead of hunting through a giant system character map or memorising hexadecimal, you type what you want in words. The set here is curated to around eight hundred of the characters people actually reach for: arrows, mathematical operators, currency signs, punctuation, geometric shapes, Greek letters, and superscript and subscript digits. A designer needs a real multiplication sign instead of a lowercase x, a developer needs the CSS escape for a chevron, and a writer needs an en dash rather than a hyphen. Every character carries five representations, and each has a job. The glyph is the visible symbol, which you copy straight into a document or message. The code point is the character's permanent address in Unicode, written as U+ followed by four or more hexadecimal digits, so U+2192 is the rightwards arrow. The HTML entity is how you place the character in web page markup without pasting a raw glyph, and it comes in two forms: decimal, such as the ampersand-hash-8594-semicolon form, and hexadecimal, the ampersand-hash-x-2192 form. The CSS escape is a backslash followed by the hex code, used inside the content property for pseudo-elements. The JavaScript escape is a backslash-u followed by four hex digits, used inside string literals in code. One character, five copyable forms, each matched to the place you are pasting it. Walk through a search. Type right arrow into the box and the finder narrows the list to characters whose names contain those words. The rightwards arrow appears with its glyph, the arrow itself, its code point U+2192, its decimal HTML entity, its hexadecimal HTML entity, its CSS escape backslash-2192, and its JavaScript escape backslash-u2192. A copy button sits beside each form, so you grab exactly the representation your context needs. Type times or multiplication and you land on the multiplication sign at U+00D7, distinct from the letter x, which matters when the difference is a wrong-looking equation. Type rupee and you get the Indian rupee sign at U+20B9 rather than a generic currency placeholder. Specific situations show why the finder saves time. A front-end developer building a breadcrumb separator searches chevron, copies the CSS escape, and drops it into a before pseudo-element without ever pasting a raw glyph into the stylesheet. A physics teacher writing worksheet HTML searches theta and lambda and copies the Greek letters with their entities so they render correctly across browsers. A copywriter working on a price table searches the euro and yen signs and copies the glyphs directly. A programmer localising a string searches degree and copies the JavaScript escape so the source file stays plain ASCII and survives every editor. The category filter lets you browse just currency or just arrows when you are not sure of a name, and a recently-copied strip keeps the last handful of characters within reach so you do not search the same symbol twice in one session. A couple of practical notes. The curated set is deliberately not the full 149,000-character Unicode standard; it covers the symbols people paste into everyday documents and code, so if you need an obscure historic script character this is not the right tool. Copied glyphs depend on the font at the destination showing that character, so a symbol that looks fine here can appear as a box in an app whose font lacks it, which is a display limitation rather than a copying error. Search matches against the character names, so descriptive words work better than guesses at the symbol itself. Everything runs locally in your browser; your searches and the characters you copy are never uploaded, stored, or logged.

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