CSS Formatter
Make your CSS code readable and organized
Consistent CSS without a build step
Style rules pasted from different sources rarely look alike: some are crammed onto one line, others use tabs, and braces float in random places. The CSS formatter rewrites the layout of your code so every rule follows the same pattern. It is a quick way to tidy a snippet before committing it, sharing it in a code review or dropping it into documentation.
Formatting your stylesheet
- Paste the code into CSS Code Input. There is a Paste button for the clipboard and a Clear button that also hides any earlier output.
- Under Indentation Size, choose 2, 4 or 8 spaces. Four spaces is the default.
- Keep Syntax Validation checked if you want the tool to inspect your braces and semicolons at the same time.
- Press Process & Format CSS.
- The Formatted Result card shows your original code on one side and the new version on the other, with a footer that lists file size, rule count and line count.
- Take the result with Copy or Download, which saves a file named formatted.css.
How the layout is decided
Every selector sits on its own line followed by an opening brace. Each declaration then gets a separate indented line ending with a semicolon, and the closing brace returns to the parent level. Blocks inside at-rules like @media receive an extra level of indentation, and comments are moved onto their own lines so they do not hide other code.
Where teams and individuals use it
- Normalising snippets from different developers before a pull request.
- Making an inherited or generated stylesheet legible enough to refactor.
- Preparing neat examples for a blog post, wiki page or tutorial.
- Checking after a merge conflict that the braces still line up.
What it does not do
The formatter changes whitespace only. It does not reorder properties, rename anything or remove duplicates, and although the page shows extra checkboxes, the indentation size is the setting that shapes the output. The validation step is deliberately simple: it flags unbalanced curly braces and property lines that appear to be missing a semicolon, giving a line number for each. It cannot tell whether a property name exists or a value is legal.
Because the formatting is text-based, it inserts a space after every colon. That is harmless inside declarations but can alter selectors like a:hover or address values such as http://example.com, so glance over those in the output. A last declaration without a semicolon may be reported as possibly missing one even though CSS allows it. To shrink a stylesheet again afterwards, use the CSS Minifier.
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