Hex Viewer

What it's for

Look at the raw bytes of a file or a piece of text. Useful for spotting hidden characters, checking a file’s real type, finding byte-order marks or line-ending problems, and seeing exactly how text is encoded.

For example, when a file won’t open or a script chokes on an invisible character, view it here to see what’s really in it.

How to use it

Choose a file, or type text and choose View text below as UTF-8. Each row shows the offset and 16 bytes in hex, with the characters they represent above them. Multi-byte UTF-8 characters are shown across their bytes and control characters as symbols. The tool also suggests what kind of file it looks like. Use Previous and Next, or type an offset such as 0x1F00 or 7936 in Go to offset, to move around.

Analyse the whole file reads all of it (up to 512 MB) and gives its entropy (near 8 bits per byte means compressed or encrypted data), every run of readable text of the length you choose, with its offset, as the strings command does, and any other files whose signatures appear inside it, such as a ZIP added after a picture. Type a reported offset into Go to offset to look at it.

Example

Type this in the text box and choose View text below as UTF-8:

Hi ☕

The tool reports 6 bytes: 48 69 20 e2 98 95. H, i and the space are one byte each, and the coffee cup takes three bytes in UTF-8.

Good to know

It’s a viewer, not an editor. Files are read 4 KB at a time straight from disk, so even very large files open instantly, and nothing is uploaded.