How to open an HTML file on Android

Last updated: August 2026

Android ships no app whose job is opening a local .html file, so tapping one in a file manager often does nothing at all. Three approaches do work, and which one you want depends on whether the file brings its own stylesheet and images along with it.

Why tapping the file usually does nothing

A browser is built to fetch a page over the network. Opening one that is already sitting on the phone is a different job, and Android ships no default handler for it. What turns up in the Open with list is whatever you happen to have installed, and on a lot of phones that list comes up empty. Some file managers make it worse by treating an unknown type as a download and quietly saving a second copy instead of opening the first.

Option 1: type the path into Chrome

Find where the file actually is.
Open Files and look in Downloads. Note the exact name, extension included.
Type the path into Chrome's address bar.
Downloads is normally file:///sdcard/Download/, so a file saved there is file:///sdcard/Download/page.html. Entering the folder on its own lists what is inside it, which is quicker than guessing at a file name.
Read the page.
A single self contained file renders just as it would on a computer.

What survives the trip, and what does not. A stylesheet and an image sitting in the folder next to the page do load, so a page that looks unstyled is usually pointing at a file that is not where it says it is. What a browser does refuse is the part of a page that goes looking for data: fetch and XMLHttpRequest are blocked, and so is any script loaded as a module, because a file on disk has no origin for the browser to check them against. A page that draws a chart from a JSON file beside it is the case that breaks, and it breaks silently.

Option 2: hand the file to a browser from a file manager

Press and hold the file in Files, or in whichever file manager came with your phone.
Choose Open with, or Share.
Open with is the one you want. If only Share appears, that works too, though some apps will treat the file as an attachment rather than something to display.
Pick a browser from the list.
If no browser is offered, nothing installed has claimed HTML files, which is what option 3 fixes.

Option 3: open it in something that expects HTML

An app that registers itself as a handler for HTML changes the situation rather than working around it: the file type stops being unrecognised, so Open with has an answer and a double tap in a file manager goes straight there, with no path to type. The data restriction above is a rule about files on disk rather than about browsers, so an app is not a way around it. What an app removes is the hunting.

Seeing the source instead of the page

On a computer you would type view-source: in front of the address. That habit does not travel to Chrome for Android: the address bar there tends to treat the whole string as something to search for rather than as an address, and accounts of whether it can be coaxed into working differ between versions and phones. Treat it as unreliable rather than as a feature you can count on.

Two things do work. You can open the file in an app that has a source view built in, or, if you just want to read markup you already have, you can paste it into the HTML source viewer on this site, which runs entirely in your browser.

If the file came out of a .zip

Extract it first. No browser can open a page that is still inside an archive, and a page extracted on its own without the folder that came with it will be missing its stylesheet and images. Extract the whole archive, keep the structure, then open the .html file from where it landed.