What Is the Remove HTML Tags Tool?
Extract source text from HTML with a parser that understands quoted attributes, comments and nested tags. Choose continuous text, structural breaks, link destinations or a basic Markdown draft. This is source extraction, not a browser screenshot, accessibility audit or sanitizer.
How to Use the Remove HTML Tags Tool
- Paste HTML or load the sample.
- Choose the output mode and whether to decode the supported text references.
- Inspect paragraph, list and table boundaries before copying.
- Copy or download TXT, or an MD file in Basic Markdown mode.
How the Remove HTML Tags Tool Works
parse5 builds an HTML tree without loading resources or running scripts. Head, script, style and template contents and comments are omitted in every mode. Text comes from original source slices; optional single-pass reference decoding uses a limited named-reference list plus valid numeric scalars. Unknown references, NUL, surrogates and out-of-range numeric references stay literal. Attribute values such as links and alt text follow the parser's HTML decoding rules.
Structured modes insert LF breaks around supported block elements, tabs after table cells and line breaks for br elements. Source whitespace is retained, so indented markup can produce extra whitespace. Image alt text is included; external CSS, hidden-element rules, generated content and image pixels are not evaluated. HTML parser repair can change nesting in malformed input. If a repair joins discontinuous source text, extraction stops with a correction message rather than leaking markup into output.
Remove HTML Tags Tool Example
| HTML input | Mode | Result |
|---|---|---|
<p title="a > b">A & B</p> | Continuous, decode on | A & B |
<a href=/docs><strong>Read</strong> now</a> | Links | Read now (/docs) |
<ol start="3"><li>First</li><li>Next</li></ol> | Markdown | Numbered items starting at 3 and 4, with inserted line breaks |
&#65; 😀 � | Continuous, decode on | Literal numeric reference after one decode, a supplementary character and the unchanged invalid scalar reference |
When to Use the Remove HTML Tags Tool
Prepare a text draft from a CMS snippet, keep anchor destinations for review, or inspect an HTML email's source text. Use the extracted result as a draft to check, rather than assuming it matches the page's visual reading order.
Common Mistakes
Continuous mode can join neighboring paragraphs; choose Structured text for boundaries. Single-pass decoding intentionally leaves a second layer encoded. The named-reference list is limited rather than complete HTML5 decoding. Basic Markdown handles headings, emphasis, ordinary lists and selected link schemes; tables, SVG and MathML show an error. It does not faithfully convert every HTML feature, preformatted code block, list override, nested-list indentation or CSS layout. Markdown metacharacters in text are escaped; omitted link destinations are marked.
Input is limited to 1,000,000 UTF-16 units, 50,000 visited elements and 256 levels of nesting. Errors block Copy/download and clear the result. This tool does not insert parsed HTML into the live page. Extracted text or Markdown still needs appropriate handling in its destination application.
Tips for Better Results
Keep the original HTML and inspect real paragraph/list/link output. Use the selectable result when Copy fails. No character-removal score is shown because conversion can add separators or link destinations.
References: parse5 documentation and MDN parsing versus sanitization.