Limits and SizesYou type a short text with an emoji and a Hindi word, and two tools give two different counts. Both can be right, because "a character" can mean four different things.
Four ways of counting
- Visible symbols: what you see as one mark, even if it is built from several parts.
- Code points: the number of Unicode entries. Many emoji and Hindi letter-with-sign combinations use more than one.
- UTF-16 units: what some programming languages count, so an emoji may count as 2.
- Bytes: how much space a text uses; Hindi letters use 3 bytes each in UTF-8.
Try it below: type or paste text and compare the four counts.
Which one does an app use?
Apps do not always say. Our counter shows code points as "characters", and also the visible symbols. For a text near a limit, test in the app, and leave some room.