Sometimes, we want to fix error UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte error with Python.

In this article, we’ll look at how to fix error UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte error with Python.

How to fix error UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte error with Python?

To fix error UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte error with Python, we should call read to read the file into a string.

For instance, we write

with open(path, 'rb') as f:
    contents = f.read()

to call open to open the file at path as a binary with 'rb'.

Then we call f.read to read the file into a string within the with block.

Conclusion

To fix error UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte error with Python, we should call read to read the file into a string.