JSON Decode Online
Paste a JSON-encoded string and get the plain text back — backslash escapes are resolved, Unicode sequences are decoded, and the result is ready to use anywhere.
Last updated: May 26, 2026
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Buy me a coffeeWhat is JSON Decode Online?
When text is stored inside a JSON document, special characters are escaped: a literal double quote becomes `\"`, a newline becomes `\n`, a backslash becomes `\\`, and any non-ASCII character can be encoded as `\uXXXX`. To get the original text back you have to reverse all of those substitutions — which is what JSON decoding does.
This tool accepts a JSON string literal, with or without the surrounding double quotes, and returns the decoded plain text. Internally it uses the browser's `JSON.parse` to do the unescaping, which handles every valid JSON escape sequence including surrogate-pair Unicode characters and control codes.
How to Use JSON Decode Online
Paste the JSON-encoded string into the input panel.
The decoded plain text appears instantly on the right.
Click Copy to copy the result.
Common Use Cases
- Reading the actual text out of a JSON API response field that contains escapes.
- Decoding a logged JSON string value back to a human-readable form.
- Unescaping a JSON snippet copied from a configuration file or source code.
- Recovering the original multi-line text from a JSON field that stored it as one line.
- Inspecting Unicode characters that were stored as \uXXXX escapes.
Example Input and Output
A JSON string with escaped quotes and a newline decodes to plain text.
"Hello, \"World\"!\nGoodbye."Hello, "World"!
Goodbye.Privacy
All decoding happens in your browser. No data is sent to a server.
Reverse operation
To escape a plain string into a JSON string literal, use the JSON Encode Online tool.