UTF16 Encode Decode

UTF-16 Converter

UTF-16 converter helps you convert between Unicode character numbers, characters, UTF-8 code units in hex, percent escapes,and numeric character references.

How to convert to UTF16

1. Enter your text in the editor at the top.
2. You will automatically get UTF16 bytes at the bottom.
3. You can also import text files for conversion

A Detailed Guide to UTF 16 vs UTF 8: What You Need to Know

Understanding the fundamental differences between UTF 16 and UTF 8 is vital to ensuring a practical programming language for your projects.

UTF 16 and UTF 8 are different character encoding formats in software programming languages. Understanding the differences between the two will help you choose the suitable encoding format for your projects and ensure high efficiency.

What is Unicode?

Unicode is a character encoding standard which defines how characters are represented in the text. It consists of a code point for each character, allowing programs to identify and display each character with an assigned number. Unicode also supports several different encoding forms, such as UTF 8 and UTF 16.

What is UTF-16?

UTF-16 is a Unicode encoding format that uses two bytes per character and is used to represent characters in the Basic Multilingual Plane. This standard allows up to 65,536 possible characters but does not cover all Unicode characters. UTF-16 can be represented using either big-endian (most significant byte first) or little-endian (least significant byte first) format.

UTF-16 encoding 

UTF-16 is a Unicode encoding that consists of one or two 16-bit components for each character. As single Unicode 16-bit units, UTF-16 offers access to around 60,000 characters. Surrogate pairs, a mechanism, allows it to access an additional 1 000 000 characters.

These pairings' high (first) and low (second) values are separated into two Unicode code ranges. 0xD800 to 0xDBFF are the highs, and 0xDC00 to 0xDFFF are the lows.

Characters needing surrogate pairs are uncommon because the most common characters have already been encoded in the first 64,000 values.

UTF-16 is extremely well designed as the best compromise between handling and space, and all commonly used characters can be stored with one code unit per code point. UTF16 is the default encoding for Unicode.

What is UTF-8? 

UTF-8 is a Unicode encoding format that uses one byte per character and represents characters not covered by the UTF-16 standard. Due to its smaller size, it is popularly used for web pages and software applications. It also allows up to 4 bytes per character, representing more than one million characters.

Common Use Cases for UTF-16 and UTF-8

UTF-16 is the standard representation system for Unicode characters and is used in Windows systems or applications using double-byte character encoding. It can be the default encoding for HTML documents but is usually too large to be practical for web pages. UTF-8 provides a much smaller file size and is more efficient when displaying non-Latin languages such as Chinese, Korean, or Japanese characters. As a result, it’s often the preferred choice for web pages and software applications.

The Advantages of UTF-8 vs UTF-16

One of the significant benefits of UTF-8 is that it compresses text by only using as many bytes as needed to represent a character. This ensures that your files are smaller in size and more efficient to process, both for loading times on webpages and for software download speeds. It also makes localization easier since one global character set can be used without specifying which encoding the user needs.

Summary: UTF16 and UTF8 character encoding formats

• UTF-16 and UTF-8 have commonly used character encoding formats representing text in computers. 
• UTF-16 is commonly used in applications that require support for non-Latin scripts, while UTF-8 is more commonly used in web applications due to its smaller storage size and efficient handling of Latin scripts.

What are Unicode encodings UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32?

We now know that Unicode is an international standard that encodes every known character to a unique number. But, how do we move these unique numbers around the internet? Transmission is achieved using bytes of information.

UTF-8: Every code point is encoded using one, two, three, or four bytes in UTF-8. It is ASCII backward compatible. All English characters use only one byte, which is exceptionally efficient. If we're sending non-English characters, we'll merely need more bytes.  It is the most used type of encoding, and Python 3 uses it by default. The default encoding in Python 2 is ASCII (unfortunately).
UTF-16 UTF-16 has a variable length of 2 or 4 bytes. Because most Asian text can be encoded in two bytes each, this encoding is ideal for it. It isn't very good for English since every English character requires two bytes..
UTF-32 is fixed 4 bytes. All characters are encoded in 4 bytes, so it needs a lot of memory. It is not used very often. 

Why is UTF16 Encode relevant today?

UTF-16 (Unicode Transformation Format - 16-bit) is a character encoding format that remains relevant today for several reasons:

1. Backward compatibility: Many legacy systems and applications were designed using UTF-16 encoding, especially Microsoft Windows and Java. Maintaining compatibility with these systems is essential to ensure smooth functioning and data exchange.
2. Wide adoption: Despite the growing popularity of UTF-8, UTF-16 is still widely used in various programming languages, software applications, and operating systems. Many developers continue to work with UTF-16, making it an essential skill.
3. Unicode support: UTF-16 supports a wide range of Unicode characters, including those outside the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). This allows for representing a vast array of languages and symbols, making it a versatile encoding format.
4. Efficient for specific languages: While UTF-8 is more space-efficient for languages primarily using Latin script, UTF-16 can be more efficient for languages with larger character sets, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. UTF-16 encoding can lead to smaller file sizes and faster processing times in these cases.

However, it is worth noting that UTF-8 has become the dominant encoding format for the web and many new applications due to its compatibility with ASCII and its efficient variable-length encoding. As a result, the relevance of UTF-16 may decline over time, but for now, it remains a vital encoding format in specific contexts.