Preview Text Node

This one does exactly what it says and nothing more: it takes a string and shows it to you, right there on the node, in the graph. No file dialog, no console log to go dig through - you just look at the node and read the text. It sounds almost too simple to write an article about, but it's one of those utility nodes you end up dropping into half your workflows once you start using it, because ComfyUI's core node set genuinely doesn't ship an equivalent.

Why you'd reach for it

Text flows through a lot of a modern ComfyUI graph and most of it is invisible unless you go looking. A translator node changed your prompt - what did it actually output? An LLM instruct node generated a caption or an expanded prompt - what did it write? A string concatenation or a wildcard node built a final prompt from pieces - did it assemble correctly? Without something like PreviewTextNode, your only options are running the whole workflow and inspecting the final image for clues, or digging through server logs. This node just taps the wire and shows you the value, live, in the editor.

It pairs especially well with the translator nodes in this same pack (GoogleTranslateTextNode, DeepTranslatorTextNode, ArgosTranslateTextNode, the ChatGLM translate variants) and with ChatGLM4InstructNode - anywhere text gets transformed by something you didn't write yourself, plug a PreviewTextNode onto that output while you're building the workflow so you can actually see what's happening before it goes further downstream.

How it works

There's no processing here - it's a pass-through display. The node receives a string, renders it as text on the node body, and that's the entire job. It's also marked as an output node, meaning ComfyUI treats it as a terminal point of the graph (like a Save Image node) rather than something that has to feed into anything else - you can leave it dangling at the end of a chain purely for inspection.

The inputs and outputs that matter

There's exactly one of each, so this is short:

• text (STRING, required) - whatever you want displayed. Wire the output of any text-producing node into it.
• Output: STRING - the same text, passed straight through. Useful if you want to preview a value and keep using it further down the graph, rather than dead-ending the chain at the preview.

That pass-through output is the detail worth knowing: PreviewTextNode doesn't have to be a dead end. You can insert it inline between two nodes that already talk to each other, and it'll show you the value without breaking the connection.

How to install it

Via ComfyUI Manager: search "ComfyUI Custom Nodes AlekPet" and install. Manually:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/AlekPet/ComfyUI_Custom_Nodes_AlekPet

Restart ComfyUI. This is one of the lightest nodes in the pack - it's a UI widget, not a model or a service call, so there's nothing to download and no dependency beyond ComfyUI itself.

Common issues & troubleshooting

There isn't much that goes wrong with a node this simple, but two things trip people up:

The node doesn't grow to fit long text. With a full paragraph-length prompt piped in, the display area can feel cramped compared to a purpose-built multiline text box. If you need to comfortably read and select long output, resize the node manually by dragging its corner - it does hold the full string internally even if the visible area looks tight.

You wired it in but nothing shows. Double-check the upstream node actually ran. PreviewTextNode only displays what it received during the last execution - if the node feeding it was skipped, cached, or errored out before producing output, the preview will show stale or empty text rather than the current state of your graph.