diff --git a/common/common.cpp b/common/common.cpp
index 06f252ea6914b..3c6f98f17bac3 100644
--- a/common/common.cpp
+++ b/common/common.cpp
@@ -2326,12 +2326,12 @@ std::vector<llama_token> llama_tokenize(
     return result;
 }
 
-std::string llama_token_to_piece(const struct llama_context * ctx, llama_token token) {
+std::string llama_token_to_piece(const struct llama_context * ctx, llama_token token, bool special) {
     std::vector<char> result(8, 0);
-    const int n_tokens = llama_token_to_piece(llama_get_model(ctx), token, result.data(), result.size(), true);
+    const int n_tokens = llama_token_to_piece(llama_get_model(ctx), token, result.data(), result.size(), special);
     if (n_tokens < 0) {
         result.resize(-n_tokens);
-        int check = llama_token_to_piece(llama_get_model(ctx), token, result.data(), result.size(), true);
+        int check = llama_token_to_piece(llama_get_model(ctx), token, result.data(), result.size(), special);
         GGML_ASSERT(check == -n_tokens);
     } else {
         result.resize(n_tokens);
diff --git a/common/common.h b/common/common.h
index cca44268e6df5..157b54a3e9e08 100644
--- a/common/common.h
+++ b/common/common.h
@@ -237,11 +237,12 @@ std::vector<llama_token> llama_tokenize(
                         bool   add_special,
                         bool   parse_special = false);
 
-// tokenizes a token into a piece
+// tokenizes a token into a piece, optionally renders special/control tokens
 // should work similar to Python's `tokenizer.id_to_piece`
 std::string llama_token_to_piece(
         const struct llama_context * ctx,
-                       llama_token   token);
+                       llama_token   token,
+                       bool          special = true);
 
 // TODO: these should be moved in llama.h C-style API under single `llama_detokenize` function
 //       that takes into account the tokenizer type and decides how to handle the leading space
diff --git a/examples/server/server.cpp b/examples/server/server.cpp
index 25bc296396772..ced8f584f41a1 100644
--- a/examples/server/server.cpp
+++ b/examples/server/server.cpp
@@ -1118,7 +1118,7 @@ struct server_context {
 
     bool process_token(completion_token_output & result, server_slot & slot) {
         // remember which tokens were sampled - used for repetition penalties during sampling
-        const std::string token_str = llama_token_to_piece(ctx, result.tok);
+        const std::string token_str = llama_token_to_piece(ctx, result.tok, false);
         slot.sampled = result.tok;
 
         // search stop word and delete it