When URLs break
Browsers encode spaces, Korean characters, and symbols like & or = when building query strings. If you copy a broken link or build an API URL by hand, percent-encoding fixes it.
Encode vs decode
- Encode:
hello world→hello%20world,한글→ UTF-8 percent bytes - Decode: reverse the process for debugging
Uses encodeURIComponent / decodeURIComponent in your browser. For Base64 (different purpose), see the Base64 tool.