How to Remove HTML Tags from Text
HTML is useful for formatting, but it becomes noise when you only need the readable content. That happens often when copying text from websites, CMS editors, emails, or rich text fields that carry tags you do not want in the final result.
Removing HTML tags is not the same as converting to Markdown. The goal here is plain text: readable words, preserved spacing where it matters, and no markup wrappers like <p>, <strong> or <a>.
This is especially helpful when you need to reuse content in another system that expects plain text only, or when you want to clean content before comparing, sorting or counting it.
When this is useful
- Cleaning content copied from a website or CMS editor.
- Stripping markup before pasting into notes, spreadsheets or plain text fields.
- Preparing text for comparison, word counts or line-based cleanup.
- Removing tags from HTML-heavy exports while keeping readable content.
Practical example
If copied text includes <h1>Hello</h1><p>This is <b>example</b></p>, plain text output should simply read “Hello” and “This is example” on readable lines. The value is not in preserving the markup. The value is in keeping the content itself.
Common use cases
- Cleaning content from WordPress, web editors or email builders.
- Removing tags before running a word count.
- Preparing text for a diff or list comparison.
- Extracting readable text from HTML-heavy snippets.
- Cleaning generated content before manual editing.
Strip tags in your browser
Use the browser-based tool to apply this in seconds.
FAQ
Will removing tags keep the text?
Yes. The purpose is to keep readable text while dropping the markup layer.
Is this the same as converting to Markdown?
No. Markdown preserves some structure. Plain text removes formatting syntax entirely.
When is plain text better?
When the target field, export or workflow only needs content, not formatting.