XML Escape / Unescape

Make any text safe for XML content and attributes — or decode the entities back out.

About this tool

Five characters have special meaning in XML: & < > " and '. Unescaped, they can break document parsing or hide data smuggled into attributes. This tool converts them to their predefined entities and back.

How to use it

  1. Paste the text to make XML-safe, or click Sample.
  2. Click Escape ▸ to encode, or paste escaped text and click ◂ Unescape.

Good to know

  • The five predefined entities cover both element content and attribute values.
  • Unescaping also decodes numeric references such as &#38; and &#x26;.
  • For HTML-specific output you can use the HTML Escape tool — the difference is only in the quote entities.