Question 1

How is this different from a regex like /<[^>]+>/g?

Accepted Answer

Naive regex stripping breaks on: attributes containing `>` (rare but possible), nested tags like ``, CDATA sections, comments. Worse, regex doesn't decode entities, `&` stays as the literal seven characters. The browser parser handles all this correctly because it's the same code that renders web pages.

Question 2

What happens to `
` and `

`, do I get line breaks?

Accepted Answer

It depends on the converter mode. Pure text-content extraction collapses everything to one line (browser's `textContent` behavior). Smart conversion inserts newlines for block elements (`

`, `

`, `
`, `

`-`

`, `
`) so the output reads naturally. List items get bullets or numbers; this tool typically uses the smart mode.

Question 3

Are HTML entities decoded?

Accepted Answer

Yes. `&` → `&`, `<` → `<`, `>` → `>`, ` ` → non-breaking space (U+00A0), `©` → ©, `…` → … (numeric entity). The browser parser handles all named and numeric entities. Note that ` ` decodes to U+00A0, not a regular space, usually invisible but can trip up downstream string matching.

Question 4

What about script and style content?

Accepted Answer

`<script>` and `<style>` element contents are stripped, they're code, not user-facing text. Same for `<noscript>` (only shown when JS disabled), comments, and `<head>` contents like `<title>`. The output is what a screen reader or print-stylesheet would consider visible content.

Question 5

Are links and link text preserved?

Accepted Answer

Just the visible text. `click here` becomes `click here` (without the URL). If you need the URL appended, use the HTML → Markdown converter, Markdown keeps links as `[text](url)` and you can post-process to inline URLs.

Question 6

How are images handled?

Accepted Answer

By default they're skipped, they have no text content. The smart mode optionally uses the `alt` attribute as a fallback (`<img alt="company logo">` becomes `[company logo]` or just `company logo`). For accessibility-aware extraction, alt text is often what you want; for pure prose, drop them.

Question 7

Why does whitespace look weird in the output?

Accepted Answer

HTML collapses whitespace, multiple spaces and newlines in source render as one space. The text extractor reproduces this collapse. If your source HTML has artistic indentation, it's gone. Block elements force line breaks; inline elements (``, ``, ``) don't. To preserve original whitespace, the source must have used `
`.

Question 8

Is my HTML uploaded?

Accepted Answer

No. Parsing uses the browser's built-in DOMParser (the same engine that renders any web page). The HTML is processed entirely in your tab. Useful for proprietary content, scraped articles you don't want to re-upload, or emails being prepared for a plain-text variant.

Question 9

What standards does HTML → Text validate against?

Accepted Answer

HTML → Text checks compliance with RFC 8259 (JSON), ISO 8824-1 (ASN.1).

Question 10

What are the limitations of HTML → Text?

Accepted Answer

Large inputs (>10 MB) may slow down the browser. Does not handle binary data. Use Base64 for binary conversion. Character encoding depends on browser settings.

Node Type	Standard Action	Context Mapping
Text Node	Preserve Content	Direct concatenation
Block Tag	Strip Tag	Insert double newline (Paragraph)
Inline Tag	Strip Tag	Preserve text flow
Script/Style	Discard Entirely	Hidden from output
Comment	Discard Entirely	Hidden from output

HTML → Text

What is HTML → Text?

Frequently Asked Questions

Technical Deep Dive

HTML → Text

Two-Way Conversion

Type-Faithful

Production-Sized

01 Node Extraction Matrix

02 Sanitization Pipeline

Runs 100% in your browser

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