What's a 'zero-width' character?

Invisible Unicode characters that don't render but still count: zero-width space (U+200B), zero-width non-joiner (U+200C), zero-width joiner (U+200D), word-joiner (U+2060), and the byte-order mark (U+FEFF). They commonly sneak in when copying from rich-text apps and break diffs, hashes, and equality checks.

LF vs CRLF — does it matter?

Yes. Unix/macOS files use LF (`\n`). Windows uses CRLF (`\r\n`). Tools that compare files literally (git diff, hash functions, regex anchors) treat them as different. Pick one and apply consistently. For source code, modern toolchains expect LF.

What does 'unwrap soft-wrapped paragraphs' do?

Joins lines that are broken in the middle of a sentence (single line breaks within a paragraph) while preserving paragraph breaks (double line breaks). Common when copying from PDFs, email, or text editors with hard-wrap enabled. The rule joins single newlines with a space and preserves blank-line gaps.

Does this affect tabs?

If 'collapse multiple spaces' is on, runs of mixed tabs+spaces collapse to one space. To convert tabs to spaces specifically, use a code-formatter or replace `\t` separately.

Will it touch text inside quotes or code blocks?

Yes — the cleaner is content-agnostic. It does not parse Markdown, code blocks, or quoted strings. If you need to preserve runs of spaces in code or pre-formatted text, do not run the 'collapse multiple spaces' rule.

Whitespace Cleaner

Text Tools· 20 tools

Free whitespace cleaner. Toggle individual rules: collapse multiple spaces into one, trim leading and trailing whitespace per line, remove fully blank lines, normalize line endings to LF or CRLF, strip zero-width and non-printing characters, and unwrap soft-wrapped paragraphs. Live preview of cleaned output with character-saved count.

Input

Rules

Trim each lineCollapse multiple spaces / tabsRemove blank linesStrip zero-width charactersUnwrap soft-wrapped paragraphsTrim leading / trailing whitespace

Line endings

Cleaned

Hello world!
This has extra spaces and a zero-width


followed by
blank lines.

Unwrapped paragraph that
has a soft
wrap on multiple
lines.

Input

164

Output

139

Saved

−25

Frequently Asked Questions

References

Unicode — Zero-Width Characters — Wikipedia

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Frequently Asked Questions

References and sources

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