HTML Cleaner for Sublime Text

Simplifies complex HTML into clean, email-friendly markup. Strips out modern layout cruft while preserving structure and basic formatting.

Installation

1. In Sublime Text: Preferences → Browse Packages...
2. Create a new folder called HtmlCleaner
3. Copy all files from this package into that folder:
   • HtmlCleaner.py
   • HtmlCleaner.sublime-commands
   • Default.sublime-keymap

Usage

• Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+H (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Shift+H (Mac)
• Command palette: Ctrl+Shift+P → "HTML Cleaner: Clean Selection"

If you have a selection, only that selection is cleaned. Otherwise, the entire file is cleaned.

What It Does

Keeps:

• Basic structure: p, br, hr
• Headings: h1 through h6
• Formatting: strong, b, em, i, u
• Links: a (with href)
• Images: img (with src, alt, dimensions)
• Lists: ul, ol, li
• Tables: table, tr, td, th (email-safe)
• Other: blockquote, pre, code

Removes:

• div, span, section, article, nav, header, footer (unwrapped - content kept)
• script, style, form, iframe (removed entirely with content)
• Classes, IDs, inline styles, data attributes
• HTML comments
• Successive   characters
• Empty tags

Converts:

• <b> → <strong>
• <i> → <em>

Configuration

Edit the CONFIG dictionary at the top of HtmlCleaner.py to customize:

CONFIG = {
    "keep_tags": [...],           # Tags to preserve
    "remove_with_content": [...], # Tags to delete entirely
    "keep_attributes": {...},     # Which attributes to keep per tag
    "remove_classes": True,       # Strip class attributes
    "remove_ids": True,           # Strip id attributes
    "remove_inline_styles": True, # Strip style attributes
    "remove_comments": True,      # Strip HTML comments
    "convert_b_to_strong": True,  # <b> → <strong>, <i> → <em>
    "remove_successive_nbsp": True,
    "remove_span_tags": True,
    "remove_empty_tags": True,
    "preserve_line_breaks": True,
}

Changing the Keyboard Shortcut

Edit Default.sublime-keymap:

[
    {
        "keys": ["ctrl+shift+h"],
        "command": "html_cleaner"
    }
]

Change "ctrl+shift+h" to your preferred key combination.