UTF-8 by default

Definition

Since Java 18 the default character set of the JVM is UTF-8 on every operating system. Before, it depended on the machine (for example Windows-1252), so the same code could read text differently on different computers.

Example code

The default charset is now always UTF-8

import java.nio.charset.Charset;

class Demo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println(Charset.defaultCharset());
    }
}

// Output:
// UTF-8