JSON Unescape

How to use the json unescape

1. Paste the escaped string, quotes optional.
2. Read the decoded text.
3. Copy it.

About this tool

The usual reason to need this is a log file. Something JSON-encoded a block of text — a stack trace, an HTML fragment, an error message — and it now sits on one enormous line full of <code>\n</code> and <code>\"</code>, unreadable until the escaping is undone.

Input is accepted with or without the surrounding quotes, because people paste both. When the quotes are absent the text is wrapped correctly, taking care not to double-escape quotes that are already escaped — getting that wrong is the classic bug in tools like this one, and it silently corrupts the output rather than failing.

Escape sequences are decoded exactly as JSON defines them, including <code>\uXXXX</code> for characters written by their code point.

Everything happens in the page. JSON commonly carries API keys, personal records and internal identifiers, so nothing here is uploaded, logged or sent to a server — which is exactly why a browser tool is the right place to inspect it.

Common uses

• Making a JSON-encoded stack trace in a log readable.
• Decoding an error message stored as an escaped string.
• Recovering multi-line text from a single-line JSON field.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to include the surrounding quotes?

No. It works either way, and quotes that are already escaped inside the text are handled correctly rather than being escaped twice.

Why does it fail on my input?

Almost always a lone backslash. In a JSON string a backslash must be written as \\, so a Windows path pasted raw will not decode.

Does it decode \u sequences?

Yes, exactly as JSON defines them, so characters written by code point come back as themselves.