How to View, Copy & Download a Website's Source Code (5 Methods Compared)

Knowing how to view and extract a website's source code is crucial for learning, debugging, and migrating content. Here are the 5 best ways to view, copy, and download the code of any webpage.

1. The Native View Source Shortcut

The fastest way to see the raw HTML of a page is the built-in browser shortcut. Press Cmd + Option + U (Mac) or Ctrl + U (Windows) in Chrome, Firefox, or Edge. This opens a new tab displaying the raw, unrendered HTML.

Pros: Instant, no tools required.
Cons: Doesn't show DOM changes made by JavaScript after the page loads. Hard to read.

2. Browser Developer Tools

By right-clicking and selecting Inspect, you can view the live DOM (Document Object Model). This shows the HTML exactly as it exists right now, including any changes injected by React, Vue, or other JS frameworks.

3. Command Line (cURL or Wget)

If you prefer the terminal, you can fetch the HTML of a page using curl: curl https://example.com. This is great for automation but only grabs the raw initial HTML, missing any CSS or JavaScript files.

4. Specialized Browser Extensions

Tools like Web Scraper or CSS Peeper can extract specific parts of a page, but they often struggle with downloading the entire site architecture intact.

5. The Easy Way: ZipIt Website Code Extractor

If you want to view, copy, or download the entire source code (HTML, CSS, JS, and assets) neatly bundled into a ZIP file, use the ZipIt Website Code Extractor. It parses the live DOM, resolves all relative paths, and gives you a clean, offline-ready version of the site with one click.