diff --git a/tokenizers/src/pre_tokenizers/byte_level.rs b/tokenizers/src/pre_tokenizers/byte_level.rs
index 8b3755a9..547bbff3 100644
--- a/tokenizers/src/pre_tokenizers/byte_level.rs
+++ b/tokenizers/src/pre_tokenizers/byte_level.rs
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 use crate::tokenizer::{Decoder, PreTokenizer, Result};
 use regex::Regex;
 use std::collections::HashMap;
+use unicode_categories::UnicodeCategories;
 
 fn bytes_char() -> HashMap<u8, u32> {
     let mut bs: Vec<u8> = vec![];
@@ -59,9 +60,9 @@ impl PreTokenizer for ByteLevel {
                 let last = s[start..end].chars().last();
                 let next = s[end..].chars().nth(0);
                 if last.is_some()
-                    && last.unwrap().is_whitespace()
+                    && last.unwrap().is_separator_space()
                     && next.is_some()
-                    && !next.unwrap().is_whitespace()
+                    && !next.unwrap().is_separator_space()
                 {
                     if let Some(newstr) = s[start..end]
                         .chars()
@@ -77,12 +78,10 @@ impl PreTokenizer for ByteLevel {
                 // a whitespace before our match
                 let prev = s[0..start].chars().last();
                 let current = s[start..end].chars().nth(0).map(|c| c.is_whitespace());
-                if prev.is_some()
-                    && prev.unwrap().is_whitespace()
-                    && current.is_some()
-                    && !current.unwrap()
-                {
-                    return format!(" {}", s[start..end].to_owned());
+                if let (Some(prev), Some(current)) = (prev, current) {
+                    if prev.is_separator_space() && !current {
+                        return format!("{}{}", prev, s[start..end].to_owned());
+                    }
                 }
 
                 s[start..end].to_owned()
@@ -183,4 +182,39 @@ mod tests {
             assert_eq!(sample, bl.decode(separated_tokens).unwrap());
         }
     }
+
+    #[test]
+    fn handling_of_newlines() {
+        let s = String::from("Hello there\nHello there");
+        let pretok = ByteLevel::new(false);
+        let p = pretok.pre_tokenize(&s).unwrap();
+
+        assert_eq!(
+            p,
+            vec![
+                String::from("Hello"),
+                String::from("Ġthere"),
+                String::from("Ċ"),
+                String::from("Hello"),
+                String::from("Ġthere")
+            ]
+        );
+    }
+
+    #[test]
+    fn handling_of_multiple_whitespaces() {
+        let s = String::from("Hello there       dear");
+        let pretok = ByteLevel::new(false);
+        let p = pretok.pre_tokenize(&s).unwrap();
+
+        assert_eq!(
+            p,
+            vec![
+                String::from("Hello"),
+                String::from("Ġthere"),
+                String::from("ĠĠĠĠĠĠ"),
+                String::from("Ġdear")
+            ]
+        );
+    }
 }