How to remove accents from text
- Paste your text into Text with accents. A sample is already there, and Clear text empties the box.
- Check the options. Map special letters (ß→ss, æ→ae, ø→o, ł→l) is on by default. German umlauts as ae, oe, ue (ü→ue) and Plain ASCII output are off.
- Read the result under Text without accents. The line below it says how many characters changed.
- Press Copy plain text.
How it works
The tool uses Unicode normalization (UAX #15). It splits each accented letter such as é into a plain letter plus a separate combining accent, deletes the accents that sit on Latin and Greek letters, and joins the rest back together. Only Latin and Greek letters are touched, so the Russian letter й, Hangul and Japanese kana come out unchanged. Russian stress marks on vowels are removed too.
Some letters are not an accent on another letter, so they cannot be split. Map special letters converts them from a table: ß to ss, ẞ to SS, æ to ae, œ to oe, ø to o, đ and ð to d, þ to th, ł to l, ħ to h and the dotless ı to i. A capital Æ becomes Ae before a lowercase letter and AE otherwise.
Plain ASCII output goes further so the result is safe for slugs, file names and old databases. Curly quotes become straight quotes, long dashes become hyphens, the ellipsis becomes three dots, ligatures, full-width letters and fractions are expanded (½ becomes 1/2), © becomes (c), ® becomes (R), € becomes EUR and £ becomes GBP. Anything with no plain ASCII form, such as Chinese characters or emoji, is dropped and counted in the line under the result.
Worked example
With the default options the two-line sample becomes:
Cafe au lait, naive resume, jalapeno pinata. Sao Paulo. Zurich. Ca va? Uber alles. Manana, senora.
The line under the result reads "12 characters changed. Length: 98 before, 98 after." Tick German umlauts as ae, oe, ue and Zürich becomes Zuerich and Über becomes Ueber.
Limits and edge cases
Removing accents can change meaning: año (year) and ano are different words in Spanish, so check names, addresses and legal text. This is not transliteration. Greek keeps its Greek letters and loses only the accent, Arabic and Hebrew vowel marks are not removed, and Cyrillic and Chinese are not turned into Latin letters; Plain ASCII output drops them instead. The result is returned in the standard composed form (NFC). Your text stays in your browser. To turn the cleaned text into a web address use the Text to Slug Converter, to take out emoji use the Emoji Remover, and to tidy spaces use the Whitespace Cleaner.
Frequently asked questions
How do I remove accents from text?
Paste the text into Text with accents and copy the result from Text without accents. Letters such as é, ñ and ü become e, n and u, and the original capital letters are kept.
Does it convert ß, æ and ø?
Yes, with Map special letters on: ß becomes ss, æ becomes ae, œ becomes oe, ø becomes o, ł becomes l, đ becomes d and þ becomes th. Switch the option off to leave those letters as they are.
How do I turn ü into ue and ö into oe?
Tick German umlauts as ae, oe, ue. Müller becomes Mueller and Österreich becomes Oesterreich. With the option off, ü becomes u and ö becomes o.
Will it fix curly quotes and long dashes?
Only with Plain ASCII output on: curly quotes become straight quotes, long dashes become hyphens and the ellipsis becomes three dots. With it off they are left alone.
What about Chinese, Japanese and Arabic?
Those are different scripts, not accents, so they stay unchanged. Plain ASCII output drops them because they have no ASCII form. Converting them to Latin letters needs a transliteration tool for that language.