Web/API/TextDecoder/encoding

This is an experimental technologyCheck the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.

The TextDecoder.prototype.encoding read-only property returns a DOMString containing the name of the decoding algorithm used by the specific decoder.

It can be one of the following values:

• The recommended encoding for the Web: 'utf-8'.
• The legacy single-byte encodings: 'ibm866', 'iso-8859-2', 'iso-8859-3', 'iso-8859-4', 'iso-8859-5', 'iso-8859-6', 'iso-8859-7', 'iso-8859-8, 'iso-8859-8i', 'iso-8859-10', 'iso-8859-13', 'iso-8859-14', 'iso-8859-15', 'iso-8859-16', 'koi8-r', 'koi8-u', 'macintosh', 'windows-874', 'windows-1250', 'windows-1251', 'windows-1252', 'windows-1253', 'windows-1254', 'windows-1255', 'windows-1256', 'windows-1257', 'windows-1258', or 'x-mac-cyrillic'.
• The legacy multi-byte Chinese (simplified) encodings: 'gbk', 'gb18030', and 'hz-gb-2312'.
• The legacy multi-byte Chinese (traditional) encoding: 'big5'.
• The legacy multi-byte Japanese encodings: 'euc-jp', 'iso-2022-jp', and 'shift-jis'.
• The legacy multi-byte Korean encodings: 'euc-kr', and 'iso-2022-kr'.
• The legacy miscelleanous encodings: 'utf-16be', 'utf-16le', and 'x-user-defined'.
• A special encoding, 'replacement', which only emits an error and an EOF code point. It is used to prevent attacks that mismatch encodings between the client and server. It can happen with ISO-2022-CN and ISO-2022-CN-ext.

Syntax

var b = decoder.decoding;

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
EncodingThe definition of 'TextDecoder.encoding' in that specification.	Living Standard	Initial definition.

Browser compatibility

The compatibility table on this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.

Update compatibility data on GitHub

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	Android webview	Chrome for Android	Firefox for Android	Opera for Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet
encoding	Chrome Full support 38	Edge Full support ≤79	Firefox Full support 19 Full support 19 Partial support 18 Notes' Notes' Implemented a slightly different version of the spec.	IE No support No	Opera Full support 25	Safari Full support 10.1	WebView Android Full support 38	Chrome Android Full support 38	Firefox Android Full support 19 Full support 19 Partial support 18 Notes' Notes' Implemented a slightly different version of the spec.	Opera Android Full support Yes	Safari iOS Full support 10.3	Samsung Internet Android Full support 3.0

Legend

Full support  

Full support

No support  

No support

See implementation notes.'

See implementation notes.

See also

• The TextDecoder interface it belongs to.

TextDecoder.prototype.encoding by Mozilla Contributors is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5.