highlightjs/highlight.js

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

24985 stars · 3748 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Highlight.js is a zero-dependency JavaScript syntax highlighter supporting 193 languages with automatic language detection and 516 themes. It works in the browser, on the server (Node.js/Deno), and with any JS framework or HTML markup.

Use cases

• highlight code snippets on a blog or docs site
• add syntax highlighting to a web page
• auto-detect the language of a code block
• render colored code in Node.js or Deno
• highlight code in a Vue or React app
• theme code blocks with CSS styles

When to choose

• you need broad language coverage with automatic detection
• you want a zero-dependency, framework-agnostic highlighter
• you need both browser and server-side highlighting

When to avoid

• you need editor-grade highlighting with full IDE features
• you need extremely precise tokenization for complex languages
• you want highlighting inside a native code editor component

Facets

library · maturity stable

ui-components frontend-framework developer-tools markdown web-development frontend developer-tools documentation browser cross-platform syntax-highlighting code-highlighting language-detection zero-dependencies themes nodejs deno web-server

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="highlightjs/highlight.js")