This is one of those things that has always bothered me, but I never got around to doing and that is being able to view the source code of a website on Android.
For the most part I don’t do any actual coding on my phone, but there are many circumstances where I have to view the source code of a website while on my Android phone.
As an SEO, being able to view HTML source code on the fly is very important for me. I am always analyzing new websites, doing proposals and helping people with issues. As an SEO there are many times when I can’t get to a desktop and need to view the HTML or CSS source code on my Android phone.
View HTML source code on Android Without an app
While there is a way to view the HTML source code of a website on an Android via chrome natively (without a plugin or an app) there really isn’t much flexibility. To do so, all you need to do do is go to Chrome and within the URL / location bar enter:
view-source:http://www.example.com
Once you do that Chrome will display the source code right within the browser:
So if you are viewing a website and want to view the source code, just replace the “http” with “view-source” and it’ll pop right up for ya.
View HTML source code on Android with an app (my preferred method)
While in general I am not a huge fan of using apps for things a device can do natively, in this case I do prefer using the VT view source app to view HTML or CSS source code on my Android device.
This is the best app that I’ve found so far, and has done me well over the last few months.
The app is called VT View Source. The VT I believe stands for Vagharshak Tozalakyan who is the developer of this app.
I normally keep this app on my secondary home screen, alongside my other apps so I can launch it easily:
This is the first screen that you’ll see when you launch the app. Enter a URL and you are good to go:
Bam: you can view the source code on an Android phone. It does a great job of showing lien numbers, and highlighting HTML syntax. Links are clickable (if you choose) and will take you to the source code of the link you click, not the actual website.
There are a number of settings on this app.
You can easily highlight code and copy / paste it into another program.
One feature that I like is the ability to validate the HTML via w3.org.
With one click you can view some cool page info, such as how many lines of code it is and the total number of characters.
Landscape view is also quite nice, and in my opinion the preferred way to view the code.
You can bookmark websites, and manage your bookmarks.
Another view of the settings. You can change the background color, text color, zooming, font size (%), syntax highlighting and a number of other options.
In addition to HTML and CSS, this app can also view source code for other languages such as JavaScript. I did not test any other languages:
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