diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 20b982c3..ef0bb840 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -6,6 +6,8 @@ The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](http://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/)
 and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](http://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html).
 
 ## [Unreleased]
+### Fixed
+- Safely decoding URI components to prevent errors when the search query contains breaking characters such as "%"
 
 ## [1.5.0] - 2021-10-08
 
diff --git a/react/components/Autocomplete/index.tsx b/react/components/Autocomplete/index.tsx
index f7beb548..d86918ad 100644
--- a/react/components/Autocomplete/index.tsx
+++ b/react/components/Autocomplete/index.tsx
@@ -143,7 +143,12 @@ class AutoComplete extends React.Component<
     const path = window.location.href.split("_q=");
     if (path[1]) {
       const term = path[1].split("&")[0];
-      this.client.prependSearchHistory(decodeURI(term));
+
+      try {
+        this.client.prependSearchHistory(decodeURI(term));
+      } catch {
+        this.client.prependSearchHistory(term);
+      }
     }
   }
 
diff --git a/react/utils/dom-utils.ts b/react/utils/dom-utils.ts
index 3af512a3..2e5e8555 100644
--- a/react/utils/dom-utils.ts
+++ b/react/utils/dom-utils.ts
@@ -49,7 +49,15 @@ export function getCookie(name: string): string | null {
   const regex = new RegExp(`(^|;)[ ]*${name}=([^;]*)`);
   const match = regex.exec(document.cookie);
 
-  return match ? decodeURIComponent(match[2]) : null;
+  if (!match) {
+    return null;
+  }
+
+  try {
+    return decodeURIComponent(match[2]);
+  } catch {
+    return match[2];
+  }
 }
 
 export function setCookie(