Remove Special Characters
Strip symbols, punctuation and weird Unicode in one click — keep only letters, digits and spaces.
What is Remove Special Characters?
Imported names or pasted product titles come laced with weird symbols, smart quotes and stray punctuation. They break URL slugs and database imports.
Paste the messy text and get clean alphanumeric output back.
If you're generating URL slugs, you strip the symbols that would break routes. If you're cleaning database imports, you avoid encoding errors. If you're prepping search keywords, you keep only the meaningful characters.
How to use Remove Special Characters
Four steps. No setup, no signup.
Step 1
Paste text with messy characters
Step 2
See only letters, digits and spaces remain
Step 3
Adjust the original if too much got stripped
Step 4
Hit Copy and use the clean version
Example
Symbols and weird Unicode get stripped.
Input
Café #1 — best place! @ToolknoHQ
Output
Caf 1 best place ToolknoHQ
Why Remove Special Characters is useful
- ✓
Generate clean URL slugs without symbol breakage.
- ✓
Prep messy product titles for database imports.
- ✓
Strip emojis and stray punctuation in one pass.
- ✓
Stack with Remove Accents for full ASCII output.
Common questions
What counts as 'special'?
Anything that isn't a letter, digit or space: punctuation, symbols, emojis, currency marks.
Tip: Use Remove Punctuation for a lighter clean.
Will accented letters survive?
Most tools strip non-ASCII letters too. Run Remove Accents first to convert é to e.
Tip: Stack tools for full ASCII output.
Are underscores and hyphens removed?
Yes, both get stripped.
Tip: Use a slug generator if you need hyphens kept between words.
Does it remove line breaks?
No, line breaks stay. Use Remove Line Breaks for that.
Tip: Combine tools for single-line output.
Last reviewed: April 2026 · Free, browser-based, no signup.
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