diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 498ee56..aba8160 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -3,6 +3,10 @@
 * Update Examples to make them more realistic #327
 * Bug fixes
    - ... is correctly passed for exporting ODS and feather #318
+   - POTENTIALLY BREAKING: JSON are exported in UTF-8 by default; solved encoding issues on
+     Windows R < 4.2. This won't affect any modern R installation where UTF-8 is the default. #318
+   - POTENTIALLY BREAKING: YAML are exported using yaml::write_yaml(). But it can't pass the UTF-8 check on older systems.
+     Disclaimer added. #318
 * Declutter
    - remove the obsolete data.table option #323
    - write all documentation blocks in markdown #311
diff --git a/R/export.R b/R/export.R
index 89d932c..cdb47e8 100644
--- a/R/export.R
+++ b/R/export.R
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@
 #'     \item OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods), using [readODS::write_ods()]. (Currently only single-sheet exports are supported.)
 #'     \item HTML (.html), using a custom method based on [xml2::xml_add_child()] to create a simple HTML table and [xml2::write_xml()] to write to disk.
 #'     \item XML (.xml), using a custom method based on [xml2::xml_add_child()] to create a simple XML tree and [xml2::write_xml()] to write to disk.
-#'     \item YAML (.yml), using [yaml::as.yaml()]
+#'     \item YAML (.yml), using [yaml::write_yaml()], default to write the content with UTF-8. Might not work on some older systems, e.g. default Windows locale for R <= 4.2.
 #'     \item Clipboard export (on Windows and Mac OS), using [utils::write.table()] with `row.names = FALSE`
 #' }
 #'
diff --git a/R/export_methods.R b/R/export_methods.R
index d1fef11..348c8e5 100644
--- a/R/export_methods.R
+++ b/R/export_methods.R
@@ -104,7 +104,7 @@ export_delim <- function(file, x, fwrite = TRUE, sep = "\t", row.names = FALSE,
                     '       colClasses = c("', paste0(col_classes, collapse = '","') ,'"))\n'), domain = NA)
         }
     }
-    cat(paste0("#", capture.output(write.csv(dict, row.names = FALSE, quote = FALSE))), file = file, sep = "\n")
+    .write_as_utf8(paste0("#", capture.output(write.csv(dict, row.names = FALSE, quote = FALSE))), file = file, sep = "\n")
     utils::write.table(dat, file = file, append = TRUE, row.names = row.names, sep = sep, quote = quote,
                        col.names = col.names, ...)
 }
@@ -205,7 +205,7 @@ export_delim <- function(file, x, fwrite = TRUE, sep = "\t", row.names = FALSE,
 #' @export
 .export.rio_json <- function(file, x, ...) {
     .check_pkg_availability("jsonlite")
-    cat(jsonlite::toJSON(x, ...), file = file)
+    .write_as_utf8(jsonlite::toJSON(x, ...), file = file)
 }
 
 #' @importFrom foreign write.arff
@@ -303,7 +303,7 @@ export_delim <- function(file, x, fwrite = TRUE, sep = "\t", row.names = FALSE,
 #' @export
 .export.rio_yml <- function(file, x, ...) {
     .check_pkg_availability("yaml")
-    cat(yaml::as.yaml(x, ...), file = file)
+    yaml::write_yaml(x, file = file, ...)
 }
 
 #' @export
diff --git a/R/utils.R b/R/utils.R
index a7dee6b..2d130e9 100644
--- a/R/utils.R
+++ b/R/utils.R
@@ -125,3 +125,7 @@ twrap <- function(value, tag) {
     }
     return(invisible(NULL))
 }
+
+.write_as_utf8 <- function(text, file, sep = "") {
+    writeLines(enc2utf8(text), con = file, sep = sep, useBytes = TRUE)
+}
diff --git a/man/export.Rd b/man/export.Rd
index e2f8002..8797764 100644
--- a/man/export.Rd
+++ b/man/export.Rd
@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ The output file can be to a compressed directory, simply by adding an appropriat
 \item OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods), using \code{\link[readODS:write_ods]{readODS::write_ods()}}. (Currently only single-sheet exports are supported.)
 \item HTML (.html), using a custom method based on \code{\link[xml2:xml_replace]{xml2::xml_add_child()}} to create a simple HTML table and \code{\link[xml2:write_xml]{xml2::write_xml()}} to write to disk.
 \item XML (.xml), using a custom method based on \code{\link[xml2:xml_replace]{xml2::xml_add_child()}} to create a simple XML tree and \code{\link[xml2:write_xml]{xml2::write_xml()}} to write to disk.
-\item YAML (.yml), using \code{\link[yaml:as.yaml]{yaml::as.yaml()}}
+\item YAML (.yml), using \code{\link[yaml:write_yaml]{yaml::write_yaml()}}, default to write the content with UTF-8. Might not work on some older systems, e.g. default Windows locale for R <= 4.2.
 \item Clipboard export (on Windows and Mac OS), using \code{\link[utils:write.table]{utils::write.table()}} with \code{row.names = FALSE}
 }
 
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test_format_json.R b/tests/testthat/test_format_json.R
index 5eb30ab..0848dda 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test_format_json.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test_format_json.R
@@ -18,5 +18,13 @@ test_that("Export to JSON (non-data frame)", {
     expect_true(length(import("list.json")) == 2L)
 })
 
+test_that("utf-8", {
+    content <- c("\"", "\u010d", "\u0161", "\u00c4", "\u5b57", "\u30a2", "\u30a2\u30e0\u30ed")
+    x <- data.frame(col = content)
+    tempjson <- tempfile(fileext = ".json")
+    y <- import(export(x, tempjson))
+    testthat::expect_equal(content, y$col)
+})
+
 unlink("iris.json")
 unlink("list.json")
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test_format_yml.R b/tests/testthat/test_format_yml.R
index ca63f9c..ac441a6 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test_format_yml.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test_format_yml.R
@@ -13,4 +13,14 @@ test_that("Import from YAML", {
     expect_identical(import("iris.yml")$Species, as.character(iris$Species))
 })
 
+test_that("utf-8", {
+    skip_if(getRversion() <= "4.2")
+    content <- c("\"", "\u010d", "\u0161", "\u00c4", "\u5b57", "\u30a2", "\u30a2\u30e0\u30ed")
+    x <- data.frame(col = content)
+    tempyaml <- tempfile(fileext = ".yaml")
+    y <- import(export(x, tempyaml))
+    testthat::expect_equal(content, y$col)
+})
+
+
 unlink("iris.yml")