A homoglyph is a character that looks identical or very similar to another character but has a different Unicode value. The Latin letter "a" (U+0061) and the Cyrillic letter "а" (U+0430) appear the same to the human eye, yet computers treat them as completely different characters. Because Unicode contains letters from hundreds of writing systems, many visually identical glyphs exist across the Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, and other scripts.

What this tool does: The Homoglyph Detector scans any text you paste and finds characters that are not what they appear to be. For every suspicious character it shows the actual code point, the script it comes from, and the Latin letter it resembles. Text that is genuinely clean is confirmed with a clear success message – so you can verify a link before you click it.

Why it matters: Attackers exploit homoglyphs to make phishing links and fake accounts look legitimate. A URL like аpple.com that uses a Cyrillic "а" looks identical to apple.com but leads somewhere else. The same trick spoofs usernames, email addresses, and even source code variable names. This tool helps you catch those substitutions before they cause harm.

It was built with a confusable-character mapping approach – a curated table of well-known lookalike pairs drawn from Unicode's "confusables" data – along with JavaScript's built-in Unicode awareness to detect non-Latin scripts. Every character is analyzed in your browser, so nothing you scan is ever sent to a server.

Homoglyphs exist because Unicode deliberately includes letters from every writing system on Earth. Many alphabets evolved to represent similar sounds, so their letters often ended up looking alike. This linguistic variety is useful, but it also creates a security weakness: the same visual shape can mean different things to a computer depending on which Unicode code point it actually is.

Common examples include the Latin O vs. the Greek omicron (Ο) vs. the Cyrillic o (о), the digit 0 vs. the letter O, and the Latin a vs. the Cyrillic а (а). This tool surfaces exactly these lookalike pairs so their intended use becomes visible.

1. Enter your text: Type or paste a URL, username, email or any passage into the Input textarea. You can also click "Load an example" for a ready-made sample, or use the file upload to read a .txt file.

2. Scan it: The analysis runs live as you type (Live mode is on by default). Press "Detect Homoglyphs" at any time to scan manually and refresh the result.

3. Read the analysis: The Analysis Result panel first shows your text with every suspicious character highlighted, then lists each one with its Unicode code point, its script, and the Latin letter it resembles. If the text is clean, it tells you so in green.

4. Fix a spoofed text: If lookalikes were found, click "Replace with Plain Letters". The tool rewrites each suspicious character as the safe ASCII letter it mimics and places the clean result in the Plain Replacement textarea on the right – for example, turning a Cyrillic "а" into a plain "a".

5. Copy or download: Use the Copy and Download icons below the textareas to copy or save the contents of the Plain Replacement output. These icons work on the output box, not the input.

6. Start over: "Clear Everything" empties the Input, the Plain Replacement output, and the analysis panel so you can check the next link or message.

Press a "Try it" button to load that example and scan it instantly.

https://аpple.com

paypaοl.com

support@securе-mail.com

@elonmusс

https://www.safepayments.com

Watch out for fake cookies in this browser.

FAQ 1: What exactly is a homoglyph?
Answer: A homoglyph is a character that looks like another character but has a different Unicode value. For example, the so-called Latin a and the Cyrillic а look identical on screen but are stored as completely different code points.

FAQ 2: Why are homoglyphs a security risk?
Answer: Attackers swap a visually identical character into a legitimate-looking domain, username, or email. A reader sees the real brand name, but the browser resolves the link to an attacker’s site. This is a common trick in phishing and domain spoofing.

FAQ 3: Can this tool remove the homoglyphs for me?
Answer: Yes. Click "Replace with Plain Letters" and the tool rewrites your text by mapping every detected lookalike back to the safe ASCII letter it resembles – for example, turning https://аpple.com (with a Cyrillic "a") into https://apple.com. The fixed text appears in the Plain Replacement box, ready to copy or download.

Note that Unicode normalization (NFC/NFKC and similar) will not remove these lookalikes: cross-script homoglyphs like the Cyrillic "а" and Latin "a" are separate letters in the Unicode standard, so they have no normalization mapping to each other. That is why a dedicated replacement step is needed.

FAQ 4: What characters does the tool consider suspicious?
Answer: It checks against a curated mapping of well-known confusables – non-Latin letters (Cyrillic, Greek, and several others) that visually mirror common Latin letters – plus characters outside the standard Latin letter range. The Results panel shows the code point and script for anything it flags.

FAQ 5: Will a normal name with accents be flagged?
Answer: Genuine accented Latin letters used in real words are left alone. The tool is tuned to catch lookalike substitutions that signal spoofing, and marks clearly-safe Latin text as clean in the results.

FAQ 6: Is my text sent anywhere?
Answer: No. The scan runs entirely in your browser with JavaScript. Whatever you paste is analyzed on your own device and never uploaded to a server.