Remove Special Characters from Text Online
Keep only letters, numbers, and spaces — remove everything else.
What is Remove Special Characters?
Removes all characters that are not standard letters (a–z, A–Z), digits (0–9), or spaces. Optionally define a custom allowlist of characters to keep (e.g. allow hyphens, underscores, or periods).
Common Use Cases
Sanitising user input for databases, cleaning file names, normalising text for search indexes, stripping symbols from exported data, and preparing text for alphanumeric-only APIs.
How It Works
Uses regex to match and remove all non-alphanumeric, non-whitespace characters. Custom allowlist characters are excluded from the removal pattern.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I keep specific characters like underscores?
Yes. Enter characters you want to preserve in the "Allow these" field and they will not be removed.
Does it remove Unicode letters like é or ñ?
In basic mode, accented characters are removed. Toggle "Keep Unicode letters" to preserve all alphabetic Unicode characters.
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