HTML Formatter - HTML Beautifier / Minifier
HTML Formatter is a free, browser-based tool for cleaning up and standardising HTML markup. Paste in anything - minified production output, hand-written templates, or a snippet copied from DevTools - and get back consistently formatted HTML in one click.
The formatter correctly handles inline vs block elements, void elements (<br>, <img>, <input>, etc.), embedded <style> and <script> blocks, preserves <pre> and <textarea> content verbatim, and never adds spurious whitespace inside inline contexts. Everything runs locally in your browser - your code never leaves your machine.
HTMLInput
HTMLInline
About HTML beautifier / minifier
Online HTML beautifier and minifier are tools used in web development to format and optimize HTML code. They serve different purposes:
HTML Beautifier:
- An HTML beautifier is a tool that takes your HTML code and formats it in a more readable and organized way. It adds indentation, line breaks, and consistent spacing to make the code easier for developers to understand.
- Beautifying HTML code is primarily for human readability and does not affect how the web page functions. It's especially useful when working on larger projects or collaborating with other developers to maintain clean and well-organized code.
HTML Minifier:
- An HTML minifier is a tool that optimizes your HTML code for production use. It removes unnecessary characters, such as whitespace, line breaks, and comments, to reduce the size of the HTML file.
- Minifying HTML is done to improve website performance by reducing load times. Smaller HTML files can be transmitted more quickly over the internet, which can lead to faster page rendering for users.
HTML beautifiers and minifiers are often used in web development workflows to balance readability during development and performance in production.
What this tool does - and how
The formatter is built around a custom HTML tokeniser written entirely in JavaScript. It builds a token stream that correctly handles quoted attribute values, self-closing tags, void elements, comment nodes, and raw-text elements like <script>, <style>, <pre>, and <textarea> - whose contents are never parsed as markup. <pre> and <textarea> are preserved exactly; <style> is formatted with the CSS formatting engine, inline <script> with js-beautify, and JSON blocks such as application/ld+json are pretty-printed or minified. It also understands HTML's optional closing tags, so unclosed <li>, <p> and <td> elements are nested correctly.
The three formatting modes each serve a distinct use case:
| Mode | Output style | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Beautify | Fully indented, one block element per line. Text and inline elements stay together on one line, so no spaces are added between words. Void elements respected. Pre/textarea contents preserved. | Code review, editing, version control diffs, learning. |
| Inline | Elements whose content is only text and inline elements are collapsed onto a single line: <h3>Title</h3>. Block elements with nested children stay expanded and indented. |
Cleaner diffs, readable templates, reducing vertical noise without losing structure. |
| Minify | Unnecessary whitespace stripped, while the single spaces between words and inline elements are kept so the page renders the same. Comments optionally removed. Embedded CSS and JSON minified; JavaScript left as written. | Production deployment, reducing payload size. |
Features
- Void Elements
- Correctly handles
<br>,<img>,<input>,<meta>,<link>, and all other void elements - never adds a spurious closing tag. - Verbatim Blocks
<pre>and<textarea>contents are never reformatted - whitespace is preserved exactly as written.<script>and<style>contents are never mistaken for HTML, even when they contain tags in strings.- Live Preview
- Switch the output to Preview to see the formatted HTML rendered in a sandbox, so you can confirm it looks the same as before.
- Wrap Attributes
- When tags have multiple attributes, optionally place each attribute on its own line for maximum readability - useful for long or complex tags.
- Self-closing Voids
- Optionally output void elements in XHTML style with a self-closing slash -
<br />instead of<br>- for XML-compatible markup. - Browser Only
- Everything runs in your browser. No server, no account, no analytics. Your HTML code never leaves your machine.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an HTML formatter?
An HTML formatter is a tool that automatically re-styles raw HTML markup to make it easier to read and maintain. It adds consistent indentation and line breaks - turning minified or hand-written HTML into clean, standardised code without changing how the page renders in a browser.
What is the difference between Beautify, Inline, and Minify?
Beautify expands HTML into fully indented, human-readable markup with each tag on its own line. Inline mode collapses simple elements - those containing only text and inline children - onto a single line (e.g. <h3>Title</h3>), while keeping block structure expanded. Minify strips all unnecessary whitespace and optionally removes comments for the smallest possible output.
Will formatting change how my page renders?
No. All three modes only change whitespace that browsers ignore. Text and inline elements such as <span> and <a> are kept together on one line, so the single spaces between words are preserved exactly, and <pre> and <textarea> content is never touched. Use the Preview tab to check the result.
Does the formatter preserve <pre> and <script> contents?
The contents of <pre> and <textarea> are preserved verbatim. <style> blocks are formatted using the built-in CSS engine. Inline <script> blocks are formatted using js-beautify - external scripts (with a src attribute) and non-JS types like application/json are left untouched.
What does "Self-close void elements" do?
When enabled, void elements like <br>, <img>, and <input> are output with an explicit self-closing slash: <br />. This is useful when writing HTML that must also be valid XML (XHTML). It has no effect on standard HTML5 rendering.
Is my HTML sent to a server?
No. All formatting is performed entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your HTML code is never transmitted to any server, stored, or logged. The tool works fully offline once the page has loaded.