---
title: "Visual Characters plugin"
description: "See invisible characters like non-breaking spaces."
canonical_url: "https://www.tiny.cloud/docs/tinymce/latest/visualchars/"
md_url: "https://www.tiny.cloud/docs/tinymce/5/visualchars/index.md"
version: "5"
last_updated: "2024-04-16T01:50:26Z"
tokens: 277
---
Important This page documents TinyMCE 5. For new projects, Tiny recommends using the latest, most up-to-date version. [See TinyMCE 8 documentation](../../latest/visualchars/).
# Visual Characters plugin

This plugin adds the ability to see invisible characters like ` ` displayed in the editable area. It also adds a toolbar control and a menu item `Show invisible characters` under the `View` menu.

## Basic setup

```js
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to your HTML
  plugins: 'visualchars',
  menubar: 'view',
  toolbar: 'visualchars'
});
```

## Options

This setting affects the execution of the `visualchars` plugin. Characters can be configured to be visible by default using this option.

### `visualchars_default_state`

This option enables specifying the default state of the Visual Characters plugin.

**Type:** `Boolean`

**Default Value:** `false`

**Possible Values:** `true`, `false`

#### Example: Using `visualchars_default_state`

```js
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to the HTML
  plugins: 'visualchars',
  menubar: 'view',
  toolbar: 'visualchars',
  visualchars_default_state: true
});
```