Remove zero-width characters, invisible control chars, BOM, soft hyphens, and hidden Unicode from any text. 100% browser-based.
About this tool
Remove zero-width spaces, BOM, soft hyphens, control characters, and hidden Unicode from any text. Fix copy-paste glitches. Free, no signup.
What Is the Text Deep Cleaner?
The Text Deep Cleaner is a free, browser-based tool that finds and removes invisible Unicode characters that plague text copied from PDFs, websites, AI chatbots, and word processors. It targets 11 specific character categories: zero-width spaces (U+200B/C/D), BOM/zero-width no-break space (U+FEFF), soft hyphens (U+00AD), control characters (U+0000-001F), format characters (line/paragraph separators, bidi override), and special block characters. Unlike simple find-and-replace, this tool scans every byte and shows exactly what was removed.
Who Should Use This Tool?
Writers and translators who paste text from PDFs and get broken formatting. Programmers whose code breaks because of hidden characters in copied strings. SEO professionals cleaning scraped content. Students copying citations from academic papers. Anyone whose text has mysterious gaps, broken links, or unexplained formatting issues after copy-pasting from another source.
How to Use the Text Deep Cleaner
Paste your text into the input field. The tool instantly shows how many invisible characters it detects. Toggle individual cleaning options to customize what gets removed. Click Clean Text to process. The cleaned output appears on the right with a detailed breakdown of what was removed per category. Copy the result or download as a file. All processing happens locally — your text never leaves your browser.
Frequently asked
What are zero-width characters?
Zero-width characters are Unicode characters that take up no visible space but exist in the text. They include zero-width space (U+200B), zero-width non-joiner (U+200C), and zero-width joiner (U+200D). They are often inserted by word processors, websites, and AI tools, and can break code, links, and formatting when the text is copied elsewhere.
Why does my text look fine but break when I paste it?
Invisible characters like BOM, soft hyphens, and zero-width spaces are not visible in most editors but can cause issues when pasted into code editors, databases, or form fields. This tool detects and removes them so your text works everywhere.
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