PDF.FJ.CNGuide · 4 min read · Updated 2026-08-09
How to Convert HTML to PDF
Turning a saved web page or an exported HTML report into a PDF is usually a server job involving headless Chrome. For a single file, your browser can already do it.
This file never leaves your browser.
Convert your file
Drop an .html or .htm file below. The markup is parsed and laid out onto pages, and the resulting text stays selectable rather than being flattened into an image.
What carries over
The content and its structure carry over: headings stay headings, paragraphs stay paragraphs, lists stay lists. What does not carry over is elaborate CSS layout — floats, grid, flexbox and absolute positioning are not reproduced page-for-page.
So this is the right tool for a document-shaped HTML file: an exported report, an invoice template, saved documentation, an article. It is the wrong tool for capturing a complex marketing page exactly as it renders.
Steps
- 1Save the page as HTMLIn any browser, Ctrl/Cmd+S and choose HTML. External stylesheets will not be fetched during conversion.
- 2Drop the file inParsing happens locally.
- 3ConvertContent is flowed onto A4 pages with automatic page breaks.
- 4DownloadText in the PDF can be selected, searched and copied.
Non-Latin text
Embedding fonts for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic or Hebrew is a real problem in browser PDF generation, because a CJK font is several megabytes and standard PDF fonts do not include those glyphs.
Rather than dropping characters or rendering tofu boxes, the converter falls back to rendering those pages as images so every glyph is preserved exactly as your browser displays it. You will see a note when this happens. The trade-off is that text on those pages is no longer selectable — correct-looking output is worth more than selectable-but-wrong output.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will my CSS be applied?
Inline and embedded styles influence the result to a degree, but full CSS layout is not reproduced. Expect a clean document rather than a screenshot of your styled page.
Are images in the HTML included?
Images referenced by external URL are not fetched, since the conversion is offline and local. Keep that in mind for image-heavy pages.
Can I convert a URL instead of a file?
No. Fetching a URL would mean a server making that request on your behalf, which breaks the local-only guarantee. Save the page first, then convert.
Why is the text in my Chinese PDF not selectable?
Those pages were rendered as images so the characters display correctly. It is a deliberate trade to avoid missing glyphs.