What can this text cleaner remove or normalize?

Twelve switches run in a fixed visible order: line endings, NFC composition, selected invisible characters, unusual spaces, smart punctuation, tabs, line-end hyphens, line breaks, repeated spaces, line-edge spaces, blank lines and every whitespace character. Each reports its changes. The Before box stays intact; cleanup is not a reversible encoding.

Can I clean text copied from ChatGPT or another AI?

Yes, for mechanical cleanup: paste the text and review spacing, curly quotes, dashes, selected hidden characters and line endings. This does not rewrite meaning, humanize prose, evade a detector or guarantee removal of an AI watermark. Markdown tags and code syntax are not parsed.

Can I clean a text file or text copied from PDF or Word?

Open a plain-text file in an editor, or copy selectable text from PDF or Word, then paste it into Before. There is no file-import control. Use Line breaks to rejoin wrapped prose and review the result; reading order and OCR mistakes are not corrected. Save .txt exports the cleaned text as UTF-8 and adds a final LF if needed.

How do I remove line breaks while keeping paragraphs?

Choose Line breaks. It joins wrapped lines with spaces and initially keeps blank-line paragraph boundaries. Switch off Keep paragraphs when line breaks are removed to join those too. Rejoin hyphenated words removes a line-end hyphen only when a letter is followed across the break by a lowercase letter.

How do I remove extra spaces or every whitespace character?

Whitespace normalizes line endings and unusual spaces, turns tabs into one space, collapses repeated spaces and trims each line. To remove all spacing, including line breaks, enable Remove every space; it joins words together. A zero-width space is handled by the separate invisible-character step.

Which invisible characters are removed?

The selected step removes zero-width space U+200B, word joiner U+2060, BOM U+FEFF, soft hyphen U+00AD and selected C0/C1 controls. ZWJ U+200D and ZWNJ U+200C remain because they carry meaning in joined emoji and scripts. This is a fixed set, not removal of every possible invisible Unicode character.

Does it remove whitespace from HTML, JSON, CSV or an image?

This treats the input as ordinary text and can change whitespace that matters in code or quoted data. Use JSON Formatter’s Minified mode for a valid JSON document. It does not strip HTML tags, parse CSV, erase text from an image or crop PDF margins.

Are my text and settings remembered?

The draft and settings stay in this browser. A subpage applies its steps for the current visit; editing text does not replace previously remembered step or paragraph choices. Explicitly changing a step, paragraph option or ready-made mode saves that chosen setting.

Why did the pipeline stop?

At least one step must be on. When Limit blank lines is enabled, its field needs a whole number from 0 to 10. Fix the field or disable that step; the original remains unchanged.

Text Cleaner

Paste the mess into the Before box and read the cleaned copy in the After pane, with the list of steps under the tool in the order they run. Twelve steps, each one a switch: line endings to LF, Unicode normalise, remove invisible characters, no-break spaces to plain spaces, straighten quotes and dashes, tabs to a single space, rejoin hyphenated words, remove line breaks, collapse repeated spaces, trim each line, limit blank lines and remove every space. Beside each switch is the number of things that step changed in your text, so a no-break space or a byte order mark you could never have seen is a count you can read. The text you pasted is never rewritten in place: it stays in the Before box until you copy or save the result, every step can be switched off, and the order is fixed so the same text and the same switches always give the same answer.

Before0 characters

After0 characters

The cleaned text appears here as you type.

Nothing pasted yet.

Every step is optionalNothing is uploadedNo account, no size cap

Steps

9 on

Before

After

Changes

Paste text into the Before box. It stays there, and the cleaned copy appears in the After box.

Steps, in the order they run

Each one is a switch, and the number beside it is what that step changed in your text. The order is fixed and runs top to bottom, because cleaning is not order free: no-break spaces become ordinary spaces before repeated spaces are collapsed, and a hyphenated word is rejoined while the line break is still there to see.

Keep paragraphs when line breaks are removedBlank lines to keep0 to 10

Collapse spacesTwo spaces between words
The quick brown
Windows line endingsCRLF, invisible in every editor
2 line endings changed
Curly quotes and dashesStraightened to plain ASCII
"it's fine" - she said

What you cannot see is what breaks things. A no-break space looks exactly like a space and stops a line wrapping where it should. A byte order mark at the front of a paste turns into a stray character in a CSV. Windows line endings are invisible until a script reads the file and finds a carriage return on every line. Each of those is its own step here, with its own count, so you can tell what was in the text rather than guess.

Accuracy. Each step is listed in the order it runs and counts what it changed, so nothing happens that you cannot see. The original stays on screen until you copy the result, and every step can be switched off.

Common questions

What can this text cleaner remove or normalize?: Twelve switches run in a fixed visible order: line endings, NFC composition, selected invisible characters, unusual spaces, smart punctuation, tabs, line-end hyphens, line breaks, repeated spaces, line-edge spaces, blank lines and every whitespace character. Each reports its changes. The Before box stays intact; cleanup is not a reversible encoding.
Can I clean text copied from ChatGPT or another AI?: Yes, for mechanical cleanup: paste the text and review spacing, curly quotes, dashes, selected hidden characters and line endings. This does not rewrite meaning, humanize prose, evade a detector or guarantee removal of an AI watermark. Markdown tags and code syntax are not parsed.
Can I clean a text file or text copied from PDF or Word?: Open a plain-text file in an editor, or copy selectable text from PDF or Word, then paste it into Before. There is no file-import control. Use Line breaks to rejoin wrapped prose and review the result; reading order and OCR mistakes are not corrected. Save .txt exports the cleaned text as UTF-8 and adds a final LF if needed.
How do I remove line breaks while keeping paragraphs?: Choose Line breaks. It joins wrapped lines with spaces and initially keeps blank-line paragraph boundaries. Switch off Keep paragraphs when line breaks are removed to join those too. Rejoin hyphenated words removes a line-end hyphen only when a letter is followed across the break by a lowercase letter.
How do I remove extra spaces or every whitespace character?: Whitespace normalizes line endings and unusual spaces, turns tabs into one space, collapses repeated spaces and trims each line. To remove all spacing, including line breaks, enable Remove every space; it joins words together. A zero-width space is handled by the separate invisible-character step.
Which invisible characters are removed?: The selected step removes zero-width space U+200B, word joiner U+2060, BOM U+FEFF, soft hyphen U+00AD and selected C0/C1 controls. ZWJ U+200D and ZWNJ U+200C remain because they carry meaning in joined emoji and scripts. This is a fixed set, not removal of every possible invisible Unicode character.
Does it remove whitespace from HTML, JSON, CSV or an image?: This treats the input as ordinary text and can change whitespace that matters in code or quoted data. Use JSON Formatter’s Minified mode for a valid JSON document. It does not strip HTML tags, parse CSV, erase text from an image or crop PDF margins.
Are my text and settings remembered?: The draft and settings stay in this browser. A subpage applies its steps for the current visit; editing text does not replace previously remembered step or paragraph choices. Explicitly changing a step, paragraph option or ready-made mode saves that chosen setting.
Why did the pipeline stop?: At least one step must be on. When Limit blank lines is enabled, its field needs a whole number from 0 to 10. Fix the field or disable that step; the original remains unchanged.

Each step is listed in the order it runs and counts what it changed, so nothing happens that you cannot see. The original stays on screen until you copy the result, and every step can be switched off.