How to extract readable text
- Choose a public URL or paste HTML.
- Run Extract Text.
- Read the text pane. If nothing remains, the empty state is “No readable text was found.”
- Copy the output, or download
extracted-text.txt.
Reading your results
Above the text, a stats line reports word, character, line, and sentence counts, for example 412 words · 2,630 characters · 38 lines · 21 sentences. Counts describe the extracted string, not a ranking score.
We drop script, style, noscript, svg, iframe, object, and embed before reading the body. Block elements get extra line breaks so headings and paragraphs stay scannable. Entities in the HTML become ordinary characters in the text.
Paste mode stays in your browser. URL mode retrieves the document, then runs the same strip.
Paste mode without invented counts
If you paste a fragment that is only tags, scripts, or an empty body, the pane shows “No readable text was found.” and the stats sit at zero. A draft article with headings and paragraphs will produce a text view you can copy. We are not printing sample word counts from a URL run here.
Common problems and fixes
- You wanted every href or image URL. That is out of scope. This converter is readable text only. Inspect attributes in View Source.
- Copy you see in the browser is missing. Anything inserted after JavaScript runs is absent from returned or pasted HTML. The extractor never executes scripts.
- The pane is empty on a “page” of widgets. If the body is mostly canvas, iframe, or SVG, stripping those nodes can leave no words.
- Paste felt like it “sent HTML to a server”. Paste mode processes the editor locally. Only URL mode requests a public document.
- Alt text and title attributes did not appear. Attribute values are not body text. They stay in the markup, not in this extract.
- You expected a crawl of the whole site. One document per run. There is no site-wide text dump.
Readable text only
Many HTML-to-text tools keep links, markdown, or image alt text. SolViewer does not. The product is the reading copy left after non-text nodes are removed. Use that output to review wording, not to inventory the document.
How this check works
A DOM parser reads the HTML. Non-text nodes listed above are deleted. Remaining body text is serialized with breaks around common block tags, then collapsed to a readable string. Word, character, line, and sentence counts are taken from that string. URL mode first loads returned HTML; see how SolViewer fetches a page.
The download is always extracted-text.txt. For on-page tags instead of prose, use the SEO Checker.
Frequently asked questions
What does this HTML to text converter do?
It strips non-readable elements and shows the remaining body copy, with basic counts. It does not list links, images, or metadata.
Is pasted HTML sent to a server?
No. Paste mode stays local. URL mode is the path that requests a public page.
Can I convert a live URL to plain text?
Yes, in URL mode. We fetch the returned HTML, then extract. Content that exists only in the live DOM after scripts run will not appear.
Does the output include image URLs?
No. Image references are markup, not readable text. Inspect src and alt in the original HTML instead.
Related tools
- View Source — read the full returned HTML, including the tags this tool removes.
- SEO Checker — check title, description, and headings instead of flattening them to prose.
- XML Sitemap Checker — validate discovery files when you expected more than one document.
Public URL requests follow the shared fetch limits on the About page.