CSS Formatter
Format and beautify CSS instantly online. Adds proper indentation, newlines after each property, and organizes selector blocks. Free CSS beautifier — no signup, runs entirely in your browser.
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CSS minification removes all whitespace, comments, and unnecessary characters to reduce file size for production deployment. The minified output is unreadable to humans — all rules appear on one line with no indentation. A CSS formatter reverses this process: it parses the compact CSS and reconstructs it with consistent indentation, newlines after each property declaration, and proper brace placement, making it readable for development and debugging.
The need to format CSS arises in several situations: debugging a production stylesheet copied from browser DevTools, reviewing or modifying CSS generated by a build tool (Tailwind output, PostCSS transforms), understanding a third-party stylesheet that was shipped minified, or cleaning up inconsistently formatted CSS from multiple contributors. A formatter normalizes all of these to a consistent style without changing the styles themselves.
This tool processes CSS character by character, tracking brace depth to determine indentation level. Each selector block, @media query, @keyframes block, and @rule gets its own line. Each property declaration inside a block is indented two spaces. Comments are preserved in place. The output is semantically identical to the input — only the whitespace structure changes.
Common Use Cases
Recovering readable CSS from a production website
Browser DevTools show the computed CSS for any element, but the source files for production sites are typically minified. Copying a stylesheet from the Sources panel and pasting it into the formatter produces a readable version with proper indentation, making it possible to understand the rule structure and find the specific selector responsible for a style.
Reviewing generated CSS from Tailwind or CSS-in-JS
Build tools like Tailwind CSS JIT, styled-components, or Emotion generate optimized CSS at build time. The generated output is often compact and hard to read. Formatting the generated CSS helps developers audit what rules were actually emitted, verify that purging removed the expected unused classes, and spot any unintended global styles.
Normalizing CSS contributed by multiple developers
When CSS from multiple contributors or from multiple tools is merged into a single stylesheet, indentation styles, brace placement, and spacing conventions are often inconsistent. Running the combined CSS through a formatter produces a consistent style that is easier to review in code review and to diff in version control.
Understanding third-party CSS libraries
UI libraries like Bootstrap, Bulma, or Materialize ship minified CSS for production use. When a developer needs to understand which selectors a library uses, how specificity is structured, or which CSS custom properties are defined, formatting the library's CSS makes the structure navigable without requiring access to the original source repository.
How to Use
- Paste minified or unformatted CSS in the left panel.
- The formatted CSS with proper indentation appears instantly.
- Each selector block and property gets its own line with 2-space indentation.
- Click "Copy Output" or "Download" to save the result.