Simple API converts HTML to AnnotatedString with styling for UI components, replacing traditional HTML parsers. Supports custom styling, hyperlink handling, and unstyled text conversion. Future goals include inline image display.
This library provides a simple API to convert HTML to Compose's AnnotatedString, including styling and paragraphs. It can also be used to convert HTML to unstyled text.
It can be considered as a multiplatform replacement for Android's Html.fromHtml() API with support for more tags and better performance.
| Platform | Supported |
|---|---|
| JVM (Android & Desktop) | ✅ |
| Native (iOS & macOS) | ✅ |
| Web (JS & WASM) | ✅ |
./gradlew androidApp:installDebug to install to a connected device../gradlew sample:runiosApp/Sample.xcodeproj in XCode.If you have a recent version of Fleet installed, the platform targets should automatically be detected opening the project. Click ▶ to select a target device, build and run.
Alternatively, you can use the Kotlin Multiplatform Plugin with Android Studio. Follow the Run your application instructions to select or set up a run configuration for each target.
Add the dependency to your module's build.gradle or build.gradle.kts file:
dependencies {
implementation("be.digitalia.compose.htmlconverter:htmlconverter:1.1.1")
}
For Kotlin Multiplatform projects:
sourceSets {
val commonMain by getting {
dependencies {
implementation("be.digitalia.compose.htmlconverter:htmlconverter:1.1.1")
}
}
}
To display styled HTML in a Text composable:
Text(text = remember(html) { htmlToAnnotatedString(html) })
If called from inside a
@Composablefunction, in most cases it is recommended to useremember()to cache the result of the conversion, to avoid recomputation on each recomposition.
To convert HTML to unstyled text:
val rawText = htmlToString(html)
Both functions take an optional boolean argument. When set to , all paragraphs will be separated by a single line break instead of two, as it is normally the case for the tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . The default value is .
The htmlToAnnotatedString() function takes an optional style argument of type HtmlStyle which allows to customize styling. The currently provided options are:
textLinkStyles: Optional collection of styles for hyperlinks (content of tags). Default is a simple underline. When set to , hyperlinks will not be styled, which can be useful when they are not clickable (see following section).For example, here is how to style hyperlinks to use the theme's primary color with no underline:
val linkColor = MaterialTheme.colors.primary
val convertedText = remember(html, linkColor) {
htmlToAnnotatedString(
html,
style = HtmlStyle(
textLinkStyles = TextLinkStyles(
style = SpanStyle(color = linkColor)
)
)
)
}
Text(text = convertedText)
Support for CSS colored text is disabled by default in order to guarantee good contrast and respect of the Compose theme colors for unsanitized HTML input. To enable CSS colored text, set the isTextColorEnabled option to true in the HtmlStyle argument:
val convertedText = remember(html) {
htmlToAnnotatedString(
html,
style = HtmlStyle(isTextColorEnabled = true)
)
}
Text(text = convertedText)
Example of supported CSS color styling:
<span style="color: darkred; background-color: #FFFF0099">Red over translucent yellow</span>
Hyperlinks (content of a tags) will be annotated with LinkAnnotation.Url. When clicked, they will automatically be handled by the default UriHandler which will open them using the platform's default browser.
To override that behavior or disable click handling completely, specify a custom linkInteractionListener argument:
val convertedText = remember(html) {
htmlToAnnotatedString(
html,
linkInteractionListener = { link ->
if (link is LinkAnnotation.Url) {
navigateTo(link.url)
}
}
)
}
Text(text = convertedText)
Compose UI versions 1.7.0 to 1.7.6 have a bug which triggers a crash when a Text composable using maxLines is displaying an AnnotatedString containing a LinkAnnotation inside a paragraph.
This library is vulnerable to that bug because it uses both LinkAnnotation to display hyperlinks and paragraphs to handle text indentation.
It is recommended to upgrade to Compose 1.8.0 or more recent to avoid the issue.
If you are still using Compose 1.7.x along with an older version of this library, as a workaround, you can disable indentation support in Text composables which require the usage of maxLines:
val convertedText = remember(html) {
htmlToAnnotatedString(
html,
style = HtmlStyle(indentUnit = TextUnit.Unspecified)
)
}
Text(
text = convertedText,
maxLines = 3
)
See related bug reports 374115892, 372390054 on the Google issue tracker.
The htmlToAnnotatedString() and htmlToString() functions provide an overload that accepts a HTMLParser first argument in place of a String.
HTMLParser is an interface that you may implement to provide your own parser, in case the HTML is not directly available as a String (for example as a character stream or encoded using a binary format).
The default implementation uses the KtXml multiplatform XML parser library combined with extra code to handle HTML entities and invalid HTML.
The following tags are skipped, along with their content: script, head, table, form, fieldset.
Others tags are ignored and replaced by their content, if any.
All HTML entities appearing in the text will be properly decoded as well.
Copyright (C) 2023-2025 Christophe Beyls and contributors
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the );
you may use except compliance the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
https:
Unless applicable law agreed to writing, software
distributed under the License distributed an BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express implied.
See the License the specific language governing permissions
limitations under the License.
compactModetruepblockquotepreuloldlh1h2h3h4h5h6falseanullindentUnit: Unit of indentation for block quotations and nested lists. Default is 24 sp. Note that em units are not yet supported for indentation in Compose Desktop. Set to 0.sp or TextUnit.Unspecified to disable indentation support.isTextColorEnabled: Enable CSS colored text support (see next section)."style" attribute: span, strong, b, em, cite, dfn, i, big, small, tt, code, a, u, del, s, strike, sup, sub.color) and background (background, background-color) CSS properties are supported.#RRGGBB, #RRGGBBAA, #RGB, #RGBA) are supported.rgb(...), rgba(...), hsl(...) and hsla(...) are not supported.textLinkStyles.strong, b (bold), em, cite, dfn, i (italic), big (bigger text), small (smaller text), tt, code (monospace font), a (hyperlink), u (underline), del, s, strike (sup (supertext), sub (subtext), span (CSS colors only through the "style" attribute)p, blockquote, pre (including monospace font), div, header, footer, main, nav, aside, section, article, address, figure, figcaption, video, audio (no player shown, only inline text)hr (no line drawn, but marks a new paragraph)ul, ol, li, dl, dt, ddh1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6brSurfaced from shared tags and platforms — no rankings paid for.