Finding out the default character encoding in Windows

Question

Is there any way to find what is the default character encoding in Windows? I know that in Western Europe and the US, CP-1252 is the default, but need to check this on other Windows machines too.

Alternatively, is there any list of default encodings per locale?

score 48 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 06 '13 at 06:13

48

You can check with PowerShell:

[System.Text.Encoding]::Default

which even enables you to check that across several machines at once.

answered Nov 06 '13 at 06:13

Joey

41,098

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 06 '22 at 14:02

3

In .NET Core and .NET 5+ it is System.Text.Encoding.Default gives instance of UTF8. While .NET 4 and previous versions return Windows Active one. You can find more details on following: Microsoft Reference for Encoding

answered Oct 06 '22 at 14:02

Imran Javed

131
3

Finding out the default character encoding in Windows

2 Answers2