Zero-width characters are special Unicode characters that take up no physical space when rendered. They are meant for formatting or controlling text behavior without being visible. Common examples include the Zero Width Space (ZWSP) used for line breaking, and the Zero Width Joiner (ZWJ) used to create emoji sequences.

While often harmless, these characters can cause serious issues. They are frequently used for digital watermarking, tracking users, or bypassing spam filters. In some cases, they can even be exploited for "copy-paste attacks" where malicious code is hidden within seemingly innocuous text.

Our tool detects a comprehensive list of invisible and control characters, including:

• U+200B - Zero Width Space (ZWSP)
• U+200C - Zero Width Non-Joiner (ZWNJ)
• U+200D - Zero Width Joiner (ZWJ)
• U+FEFF - Byte Order Mark (BOM) / Zero Width No-Break Space
• U+00AD - Soft Hyphen (SHY)
• U+2060 - Word Joiner (WJ)
• U+200E / U+200F - Left-to-Right / Right-to-Left Marks
• U+2028 / U+2029 - Line and Paragraph Separators

Yes. "Zero-width fingerprinting" is a technique where unique sequences of invisible characters are embedded into text. When you copy and paste this text, the hidden fingerprint travels with it. Always use this detector to sanitize text before sharing sensitive documents or code snippets.

Simply paste your text into the input box above. Once the hidden characters are highlighted, you can click the "Copy Clean Text" button. This will copy the exact text to your clipboard with all zero-width characters completely stripped out, leaving you with safe, clean plain text.