Mojibake / Encoding Fixer
Fix garbled Japanese text (mojibake) caused by encoding mismatches. Automatically reverses UTF-8, Shift_JIS, and EUC-JP encoding errors. Free online tool.
Example: 日本語 (UTF-8 Japanese text read with the wrong encoding)
How to Use
Paste your garbled text
Copy the garbled text from your email, webpage, or file and paste it into the input box. Click 'Try example' to see a live demonstration.
Review the repair candidates
The tool automatically tries 4 encoding combinations. Candidates marked 'Japanese detected' are the most likely correct decoding.
Copy the correct text
Once you identify the correct result, click 'Copy' to copy it to your clipboard.
FAQ
- Mojibake occurs when text encoded in one character encoding is read or displayed using a different encoding. For example, UTF-8 Japanese text read as Windows-1252 (Latin-1) shows as symbols like '日本語' instead of '日本語'. Common causes include opening a UTF-8 file in old Windows software, or receiving emails with incorrect charset headers.
- This tool reverses the 'wrong encoding misread' by re-encoding garbled characters back to their original bytes, then re-decoding with Japanese encodings. It works best for UTF-8 text misread as Latin-1/Windows-1252, which is the most common case. Doubly-garbled text (encoding errors applied multiple times) or binary data corruption may not be recoverable.
- Yes. If the original text was Shift_JIS or EUC-JP bytes mistakenly read as Latin-1, the tool will show a candidate with the correct Japanese text. Look for the result marked 'Japanese detected'.
- Windows historically defaulted to Shift_JIS or Windows-1252, while macOS and Linux default to UTF-8. This mismatch causes mojibake when sharing files across platforms or opening old emails in modern software. Windows 11 is gradually migrating to UTF-8 as default, but legacy software compatibility issues remain.