How to Remove Accents from Text (For URLs and Databases)

To remove accents from text, use an online accent remover that strips diacritical marks from characters while preserving the base letters. Our Remove Accents tool converts accented characters like é, ü, and ñ to their plain ASCII equivalents.

Why Remove Accents

Accent removal (also called text normalization or ASCII-folding) is essential in many contexts:

URL generation — URLs cannot contain accented characters; convert “café” to “cafe”
Database compatibility — older databases may not support Unicode fully
Search functionality — ensure “cafe” matches “café” in search results
Cross-platform data — some systems only handle ASCII characters
File naming — avoid issues with filesystems that don’t support Unicode
Data processing — simplify text before analysis or comparison
API integration — some APIs require ASCII-only input

Accent Conversion Table

Accented	Unaccented	Character Name
à, á, â, ã, ä, å	a	A with grave/acute/circumflex/tilde/umlaut/ring
è, é, ê, ë	e	E with grave/acute/circumflex/umlaut
ì, í, î, ï	i	I with grave/acute/circumflex/umlaut
ò, ó, ô, õ, ö	o	O with grave/acute/circumflex/tilde/umlaut
ù, ú, û, ü	u	U with grave/acute/circumflex/umlaut
ñ	n	N with tilde
ç	c	C with cedilla
ß	ss	German sharp s (eszett)
Æ, æ	AE, ae	Latin AE ligature
Ø, ø	O, o	O with stroke
þ	th	Old English thorn

How to Remove Accents Online (Step-by-Step)

Open the Remove Accents tool
Type or paste text containing accented characters
The unaccented text appears instantly
Copy the cleaned text for your application

Example

Before:

Café déjà vu — São Paulo, München, façade, crème brûlée

After:

Cafe deja vu — Sao Paulo, Munchen, facade, creme brulee

Programming Examples

JavaScript

text.normalize('NFD').replace(/[\u0300-\u036f]/g, '');

Python

import unicodedata

def remove_accents(text):
    nfkd = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', text)
    return ''.join(c for c in nfkd if not unicodedata.combining(c))

Accent Removal for URLs

When generating SEO-friendly URLs from accented text:

Café → cafe
São Paulo → sao-paulo
München → muenchen or munchen
façade → facade

After removing accents, convert to lowercase, replace spaces with hyphens, and remove special characters for a clean URL slug.

Accent-Sensitive vs Accent-Insensitive Search

Accent-insensitive search improves user experience:

Searching for “cafe” finds both “cafe” and “café”
Searching for “Munchen” finds “München”
Users don’t need to know how to type accented characters

To implement accent-insensitive search, normalize both the search query and the stored data by removing accents before comparison.

FAQ

Does removing accents change the meaning of words?

In most cases, removing accents preserves meaning. However, some words differ only by accent in certain languages (Spanish “sí” meaning yes vs “si” meaning if). Use accent-insensitive approaches with caution in language-specific contexts.

Will this affect other special characters?

The tool targets only accented letters and diacritical marks. Other Unicode characters (emojis, symbols) are preserved unless they have diacritical components.

Can I undo accent removal?

No. Accent removal is a one-way transformation. Keep the original text if you need accented versions later.

What about ligatures?

Common ligatures like Æ (AE) and Œ (OE) are expanded to their component letters. This is standard for most applications.

Is accent removal the same as ASCII-folding?

Yes. Both terms refer to converting Unicode characters with diacritical marks to their plain ASCII equivalents.

Try our free Remove Accents tool to strip diacritical marks from text for URLs, databases, and cross-platform compatibility.