Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every Unicode symbol
fontgenerator.designI’m building a Unicode reference where each symbol has its own dev-friendly page with all relevant encodings.
Example: [https://fontgenerator.design/symbol/almost-equal-to](https://fontgenerator.design/symbol/almost-equal-to)
Includes Unicode, HTML, CSS, JS, UTF-8/16 bytes, URL encoding, and usage examples.
The same structure is used across thousands of symbols (math, arrows, currency, tech/UI, punctuation).
Built because existing references are fragmented. Feedback welcome.
I run a couple similar sites:
FileFormat.Info[1] has a page per codepoint. It has been around awhile, so the UI isn't as whizzy, but it has all the data and works w/o JavaScript
UnicodeSearch[2] is an updated search UI that uses JavaScript and the excellent Tabulator grid widget.
There are actually a ton of similar sites with a page-per-codepoint. It is all fun to make one, until the bots come along and hammer every page.
[1] https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2248/index.htm
[2] https://www.unicodesearch.org/
Long time fileformat.info user. here, just wanted to say thanks -- always found it incredibly useful for this exact purpose.
Same here, it is a tool that I reach for infrequently but when I need it it's always proven invaluable.
1. Enthusiastically try fileformat.info
2. “141 TCF vendor(s) and 69 ad partner(s) want to track you”
3. Exit :-(
I get where you are coming from, and have put some thought into it.
I built the site over 20 years ago, and while it was fun to make, I wouldn't have maintained it this long if is was costing me every month.
I've tried to minimize the intrusiveness: I disabled the pop-up and interstitial ads and I don't serve anything different to people with ad-blockers. And I've stuck with Google Adwords, despite requests from all sorts of questionable alternatives.
I'm not sure about the future: bots are causing all sorts of trouble, and the ad revenue is trending down and is now less than break even.
Isn’t it just a bunch of static pages? You can get that hosted for free.
There wasn't free hosting in 2003 when I first made it. I have thought about converting it to static, but it would be a complete rewrite, and there is always some other new shiny thing to play with instead.
The newer things I'm doing (like UnicodeSearch.org) are static, though I don't like forcing everyone to have JavaScript enabled.
Is there any free static hosting that has lasted longer than a few years?
I love fileformat.info, thank you so much for it!
I know it probably won’t amount to a lot, but have you tried asking for donations? I love seeing websites I regularly use doing that and not just relying on ads.
I’m glad to hear it’s helping you keep the costs down - that’s positive. It’s the type of popup that triggers my allergy - which as allergies go is mostly my problem.
Feature request: some context, history and/or example of popular usage.
Some symbols leave me with more questions than answers, like “LEFT HALF RUNNING MAN”[1].
I’d like to at least see that it’s a glyph part, that there are two in total, and what does the other half look like; right now the “right half running man” is not listed anywhere on that page, not even in the “related symbols” section.
Off topic, the running man symbol possibly comes from MouseText character set (the one in the Apple IIc[2]). It was one of many character sets included in the legacy computing block[3].
[1]: https://fontgenerator.design/symbol/left-half-running-man
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MouseText
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_for_Legacy_Computing
This history was a surprisingly interesting read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43667010
Great example — thanks for the context. I added explicit linking for paired glyph parts (left/right halves) and reference links in Notes. This kind of symbol history is exactly the gap I want to fill.
No disrespect but I would not call this "clean". The design is overwhelmingly cluttered and distracting. Especially given that each symbol is obscured by a black square with an arrow covering it. The symbols are themselves very small.
Maybe get rid of all the noise and just display the symbols in a nice grid without all the fluff or layers.
It feels really noisy and specifically, not clean for me too, so much that it pushes me away. It's interesting and fortunate that it works for the author and some (most?) commentators.
I agree. Unicode references sites are numerous and yet this is one of the worst I’ve used in terms of distracting visual noise.
24h update after the Show HN — quick recap.
Based on the feedback here, I spent the last day tightening a few core things:
- Navigation / mobile: tapping a card now opens the symbol page directly; copy is a separate, larger button. The tiny expand target is gone.
- Search: alias + lightweight fuzzy matching is in (e.g. “section”, “angstrom”, “greater than”), plus a /codepoint/... fallback so pasting a literal character or U+XXXX always lands on a usable page, even outside the curated index.
- Missing glyphs: added a small “Font tips (if you see □)” section with system font notes and Noto suggestions.
- Content: HTML/CSS/JS guidance now recommends writing the literal character + UTF-8 by default; entities/codes are framed as legacy/reference only. Added Notes and improved Related (pairs, confusables, same block).
- Privacy: removed session recording; analytics are opt-in with a real reject-all (everything works fine with tracking off).
Direction going forward: fewer generic “how-to” instructions, more symbol-specific context — confusables, paired glyphs, rendering quirks, and references people actually look for.
Thanks again for the detailed feedback — it materially improved the project.
I find this page the cleanest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters. I can usually just do a Ctrl-F and find what I want.
Nice, but way too many abbreviated descriptions and no way to see the full name of a symbol without clicking on it. Needs a tooltip / title.
Or better, if 90% of all symbol names are abbreviated, your design simply doesn't work. This is especially apparent in the "arrows" section.
You’re right.
The abbreviations (arrows in particular) made scanning worse than it should be. I’ve pushed a quick update: full names on hover/focus, plus a Compact / Readable toggle for the grid.
Thanks for the nudge.
I’m looking at the currency block. Each box has a colored “drop shadow”. I spent a minute or so trying to figure out what the significance of the color is. Finally, I noticed that the color appears to cycle between cyan, magenta, and yellow. Is this a design element only, or do the colors actually have some meaning with respect to the symbol?
Purely cosmetic. In hindsight, probably unnecessary — but once you add color, it’s hard to stop
I do like how it has some brutalist web design elements. With regards to drop-shadow colours on the /symbols page, it doesn't provide additional structure, so I would choose either none or a grayscale tint. Or, if you prefer colours, choose as many distinct colours as there are categories, such that they provide that additional structure.
The symbols on that page could be a bit bigger, though, as they are the main subject. (I changed 1.125rem to something like 1.6rem for text-lg; that works, but it could get a bit crowded with the clickable arrow on lower resolution screens).
I'm not a huge fan of things that move; the offset of a block of symbols, as well as scaling of an individual symbol block when hovering seems a bit too much. I would do either, but not both.
I was going to complain about something or other in the design but then stopped myself: we don't get enough quirky designs as it is.
Not the author, but it seems to be only stylistic
It doesn't fit my definition of "clean" at all, but that's a subjective word anyway. I do have some feedback (unrelated to being clean):
- The search field is arguably the most important element on the site. It might benefit from a magnifying glass icon and/or some visual distinctions that make it actually look like a text input for searching. It's thick border and shadow make it look like all the other boxes on the page that have thick borders and shadows!
- Speaking of the search field, it would be really nice if it supported fuzzy search. For example, I searched for "greater than" and got no results. I had to search for "greater-than" (with a dash) to find the math symbols (like ≥).
- The small font size of the symbols makes them really hard to see for old people like me who are pretending not to be old.
- Ditch the analytics and cookie consent nonsense. These are anti-developer!
+1 The small font size combined with the big black box with green arrow that, at least on my iphone xs, covers part of the symbol itself, makes it really hard to see the symbols themselves on front page.
Planning to add more symbol-specific notes (confusables, common pitfalls, rendering quirks). Curious what details people usually look for but can’t find.
The useful info that doesn’t already exist a dozen times on the web is the info you can’t auto-generate.
I don't know how to find the ideal font for the missing glyph on my environment which is BSD.
Using the `unicode' command from plan9userspace, for example
the last three symbols are shown inside emacs as squares with the four hex values inside.Typing in the search field `2fff' finds `no match found'.
Good catch — I just pushed an update based on this.
The symbols search now supports code-point lookup, so you can search by:
U+2FFF
0x2FFF
plain hex (2fff, 4–6 digits)
This makes it possible to jump straight to a symbol page even when the glyph doesn’t render locally and you only have the code point (like the Emacs/BSD case you described).
One limitation to note: some symbols aren’t covered by common or default system fonts, so they may still appear as tofu boxes depending on the font stack. That’s a font coverage issue rather than Unicode itself.
Appreciate you calling this out — this was exactly the kind of workflow gap I wanted to catch.
Maybe you could use unifont glyphs (drawn as SVGs?) as fallback?
My go-to site for Unicode symbols is graphemica.com. I like that you show very directly the different use cases, but miss different encodings and the ability to browse unicode sequentially.
+1 graphemica has the right mix of completeness and simplicity for my tastes.
Very cool and helpful - I'll be using this a lot!
Interesting I discovered two new-to-me temperature symbols (℃ and ℉), but couldn't find the Alt-0176 ° generic degree sign that shows up on the MS Character Map app. I also found the There Exists symbol ∃ !! I'd been seeking for years; it was so useful since finding out about it in college logic courses... This will be even more useful when the Alt-code fields are all filled in! Thanks!
Cool! Ideas: At least do an ensemble approach by queuering llms to explain what the symbols "are". It's so auto generated now. Link to wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximation#Typography
Developers need to understand context too, not see a static page of "macOS: Use Character Viewer (Control + Command + Space) and search by name, or copy/paste."
The related to symbols make little sense. For example: https://fontgenerator.design/symbol/acute-angle Does not link to all other "angle" pages, but does to Aktieselskab?
Good point. I added a Notes section and reworked “Related” to focus on things people actually get confused by (pairs, confusables, same block), not just category adjacency.
Sharing the UTF-8 Playground I built recently: https://utf8-playground.netlify.app/
Some constructive criticism:
Please don't display text directly on the grid background image. It makes it impossible to read the text easily. Currently, this is the case when you open the page for a specific symbol in the 'Usage & Context' section.
Noted.
Fixed.
It's odd that searching for "section" finds U+2E39 (Top Half Section Sign) but not U+00A7 (Section Sign).
The directions for input on on each operating system are all the same, use an app? On Windows there's a key sequence based on the codepoint integer. It should tell you exactly what to type. The Linux one is especially odd "Use the Character Map app or a Compose key sequence, then paste into your app" because if there's a compose key sequence you don't need to paste it.
Could use a list of (free) fonts that support the corresponding glyph.
Added a small “Font tips (if you see □)” section with system font notes and Noto suggestions. Also added a codepoint fallback page so you can still inspect encodings even when the glyph doesn’t render locally.
Also coverage by system fonts.
This is beautiful. Love the design. When I read the title I thought it was "one page per Unicode" so I click on the codes and hope a page will open with a giant Unicode where I can see about it in details.
Oh well! Still good.
When I click the "Click to copy" my UI reflex tells me to look for a "Copied!" or similar acknowledgement. But I don't see one, so there's uncertainty if it was copied safely to my invisible clipboard or not.
Please keep making this, it's good! What inspired you for the design? I like this style, and notice it around, but can't pinpoint.
Don’t know if it was added after your comment, but there actually is one separate page for each character, just click the arrow in the top-right corner of each box. For more "giant" character previews I can recommend https://decodeunicode.org/en (which is more focussed on writing systems though).
There is also a "Copied x" toast (is this the correct term? idk) at the bottom of the viewport when you click a character box, maybe it was also added later on.
> There is also a "Copied x" toast (is this the correct term? idk) at the bottom of the viewport
It's obscured by the "We use optional cookies..." popup.
Or maybe I just wasn't looking at the bottom! Thanks
Very nice.
I found it odd, that tapping on a square “highlights” it, by making it “pop,” but nothing else really happens.
It took me a bit to figure out that I need to actually select the arrow in the upper right corner, to get the page.
Agreed — the small expand target was a mistake, especially on mobile. I switched to “tap card = open details” and moved copy into a dedicated, larger button. Much clearer now.
The arrow is too small to click on mobile
> Use an HTML entity, a decimal code, or a hex code.
Please no: just write the character. <, & and (in quoted attributes) " or ' are the only characters that need to be encoded; a few others have arguable benefit to being encoded (most notably NO-BREAK SPACE), but most Unicode characters should just be put in literally. The days when you couldn’t be confident of the file encoding are past: your HTML is being served as UTF-8 (or in the rare case it isn’t, you should fix that instead of avoiding non-ASCII in the source).
Same deal with CSS (" and \ are the only ones you need to escape) and JavaScript (" or ' or `, as appropriate).
URLs? Occasionally you may encounter a legacy system where you need to percent-encode it yourself (similarly around punycoding internationalised domain names), but you can almost always (and thus, in my opinion, should) just write it and leave anything that wants it to be ASCII to perform the percent-encoding itself.
Excel I can’t comment on, but I presume you can just write "≈" and UNICHAR should almost never be used.
Yep — fully agree.
For modern HTML/CSS/JS, you should just write the character and serve UTF-8. The entities / codes are there purely as reference for legacy cases, debugging, or when you only have a code point and no rendered glyph — not as a recommendation for normal authoring.
Your site still says "HOW TO ADD ALMOST EQUAL TO IN HTML? Use an HTML entity, a decimal code, or a hex code."
That is incorrect. As you say, you should just write the character in your HTML and ensure it's served with the correct encoding. If it's just for legacy cases, debugging or such, say so on the site.
Agreed. Updated the HTML section to recommend writing the literal character + UTF-8 by default. Numeric refs/entities are now explicitly framed as legacy / edge-case references.
Very clean design, congrats!
I’d love to see a section describing the glyph’s usage (I usual have to check Wikipedia for that) and which compose key sequence to use to type it. For instance on Linux (maybe other OSes too?) you can type <compose key> + e + = and get the euro sign.
You say "for every unicode symbol", which I guess is true if you search by code, but for anything that isn't in your curated set I'm unable to even find it if I paste the literal character or use the "official" name.
eg ℝ "Double-Struck Capital R" won't show up at all unless I search it as U+211D.
You’re right — the main index is curated. I added a /codepoint/… fallback so pasting a literal character or U+XXXX always lands you on a dev-friendly encoding page, even outside the curated sets. I also clarified this in the UI copy.
Clean ?
- Gratuitous, unnecessary cookies (and accompanying cookie consent dialog)
- cloudflare insights built into the pages
- non-zero counter in ublock origin
That's before we even get to the page source which contains, among other things:
"Clean" web pages don't need hints like this - they work without clearing browser cache or worrying about "older devices".I haven't seen this on HN in a while so it is worth reposting:
https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
Not super against cookie tracking or consent especially for a free platform, but these extreme color contrasts don't even seem to have any obvious correlations. Is it done just for looks? That's a crazy decision for a font information site
Why do I get a spinning "waiting" on every page? That doesn't seem "clean" to me... That's supposed to be raw HTML with a search.
It's cluttered with how to put your HTML character in your HTML, while being supposedly focused for devs...
All that doesn't make sense to me.
I really like this. I appreciate the many "copy" buttons that make it easy to grab various font values once I find a character. Good job!
Thanks — glad the copy buttons are useful. That was exactly the goal.
Ohh, this is great! I actually was looking for something like this the other day. Thanks for sharing and nice work!
This is some great tool for account holders who wants aesthetic styling. Wanted to know how you monetize this clean product?
On mobile, the expand icon covers 1/4 of each character so it is hard to see what they are
Opposite problem for me. I'm finding it impossible to expand because the button is so small!
Yeah, mobile is rougher than desktop right now. Thanks for flagging it.
The styling/design doesn’t work with dark-mode extensions like Noir.
How do I search for egyptian hieroglyphs? searching for "egyptian" neither for "hieroglyph" works
searching directly for 𓁤 also doesn't work
expanded button go over the side of the screen for me
pressing "V", which I'd assume meant "expand horizontal button queue into a vertical text list" instead collapses all descriptions and turns "v" into a hamburger button...
Gotta pay homage to the OG: https://raquo.net/rsaquo/
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No. Please just give me an option to reject all tracking cookies instead of just kicking me in the face with a done deal.
Whoever wrote this 'EU/UK users: this serves as our cookie notice' is ignorant of the actual law. Have a look at:
https://gdpr.eu/cookies/
Fair point — you’re right to call this out. I’ve now removed Microsoft Clarity (no session recording/heatmaps), and GA4 is opt‑in with a real “Reject all” option (default off). This is already deployed.
I'd like the hint to display the hidden parts of each box when hovered.
I don't need to be told on each one to "Click to Copy".
But nice concept.
Good points. The hover hint could definitely do more useful work, and the repeated “Click to Copy” is probably overexplaining. UI polish still very much in progress
I know the colors are a little ... intense, but I love it!
Huh. Why can't it find "Angstrom" (U+212B)?
See also the very comprehensive presentation at https://codepoints.net . For example https://codepoints.net/U+2248?lang=en
Quite useful, but that's far from "clean".
Useful!