Find a Character’s Unicode Code Point with JavaScript

Last updated: August 29, 2026.

JavaScript strings use UTF-16 code units. Indexing can return half of a surrogate pair, so use codePointAt and iterate by Unicode characters.

Read one code point

Convert the numeric result to uppercase hexadecimal for U+ notation.

function unicodeLabel(character) {
  const point = character.codePointAt(0);
  if (point === undefined) throw new Error('A character is required.');
  return 'U+' + point.toString(16).toUpperCase().padStart(4, '0');
}
console.log(unicodeLabel('A'));
console.log(unicodeLabel('\u{1F600}'));

Inspect a complete string

A for-of loop advances by code point, keeping supplementary characters intact.

function listCodePoints(text) {
  return Array.from(text, character => ({
    character,
    codePoint: 'U+' + character.codePointAt(0).toString(16).toUpperCase()
  }));
}
console.table(listCodePoints('A\u0301'));

Code points are not visible characters

Combining marks and joined emoji can contain several code points while appearing as one grapheme. Use Intl.Segmenter for cursor movement, truncation, or counting user-perceived characters.

Handle full Unicode characters

JavaScript strings use UTF-16 code units, so indexing a string can split a character represented by a surrogate pair. Iterate with for…of or Array.from when the task is about Unicode characters rather than individual code units.

Test a basic Latin letter, an accented character, and an emoji. Confirm both the hexadecimal code point and the number of JavaScript code units so the distinction is visible.

• Use codePointAt rather than charCodeAt for full code points.
• Format hexadecimal values consistently.
• Do not assume one visible glyph equals one code point.

Keep the byte encoding, declaration, storage, and decoder consistent. When diagnosing a problem, preserve the original input and change one boundary at a time so the actual cause remains visible.

Continue with HTML entities, special characters, and encoding comparison.

Reference: MDN String.codePointAt reference.