What counts as a special character?

Anything that isn't a letter, number, or space. That includes punctuation (.,;:!?), brackets ([]{}()), symbols (@#$%^&*+=~`), quotes (' " ‘ ’ “ ”), slashes, emojis, and non-ASCII letters with accents. The tool lets you toggle each category on or off.

Why would I remove special characters from text?

Common reasons: cleaning up filenames so they're safe across operating systems, sanitizing input before inserting into SQL or shell commands, generating URL slugs, normalizing CSV data before import, or stripping pasted content from rich-text editors that smuggle invisible Unicode in.

Use case — clean filenames

Filenames containing /\:*?"<>| break on Windows. Toggle 'Keep letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores' to produce a filename-safe string.

Use case — URL slugs

URLs should be ASCII-only with no spaces or punctuation. Use this tool to strip everything except letters, numbers, and dashes — then convert spaces to dashes.

Use case — SQL safety

While prepared statements are the right defense against SQL injection, some workflows still need to pre-clean text. Strip quotes and semicolons before storage to reduce the blast radius of accidental concatenation bugs.

Does it handle invisible / zero-width characters?

Yes. Toggle 'Remove invisible / zero-width characters' to strip ZWSP (U+200B), ZWJ, ZWNJ, BOM, and other Unicode characters that paste in from rich-text editors and break diff tools, search, or filenames.

Can I keep just letters and numbers?

Yes. The 'Alphanumeric only' preset keeps a–z, A–Z, and 0–9 — useful for normalizing identifiers, codes, or password-like strings.

Remove Special Characters from Text 2026 — Free Online | enytool.com

Remove Special Characters from Text — Free Online Cleaner

Strip punctuation, symbols, emojis, and non-ASCII characters from any text in one click. Toggle which categories to keep — letters, numbers, spaces, dashes, underscores — to handle every common cleaning task: safe filenames, URL slugs, SQL-safe strings, CSV normalization, and removing invisible Unicode that pasted in from a rich-text editor.

Configurable

Choose which character categories to keep or remove — punctuation, symbols, accents, emojis, invisible characters.

Filename-safe preset

One click to produce a string safe to use as a filename across Windows, macOS, and Linux.

URL-slug preset

Strip everything that isn't letters, numbers, or dashes — ready to drop into a URL.

Invisible-character cleaner

Removes zero-width spaces, BOM, and other invisible Unicode that breaks search and diffs.