HTML Formatter & Beautifier

Clean up messy HTML code instantly. This formatter beautifies your HTML with proper indentation and line breaks, or minifies it for production. Handles all HTML5 elements including void tags, inline elements, and nested structures.

Beautify, format, or minify HTML documents. Implements formatting from scratch with support for inline elements, raw content preservation, and attribute sorting.

Indent:

Preserve line breaks in text

Sort attributes alphabetically

Lowercase tag names

HTML Input

4 lines | 1862 chars

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head><meta charset="UTF-8"><meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"><title>My Website</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css"></head>
<body><header><nav><ul><li><a href="/">Home</a></li><li><a href="/about">About</a></li><li><a href="/contact">Contact</a></li></ul></nav></header><main><section class="hero"><h1>Welcome to My Site</h1><p>This is a <strong>sample</strong> paragraph with <a href="#">a link</a> inside it.</p></section><section class="features"><h2>Features</h2><div class="grid"><div class="card"><h3>Fast</h3><p>Lightning fast performance</p></div><div class="card"><h3>Secure</h3><p>Built with security in mind</p></div></div></section><section class="content"><h2>Data Table</h2><table><thead><tr><th>Name</th><th>Email</th><th>Role</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Alice</td><td>alice@example.com</td><td>Admin</td></tr><tr><td>Bob</td><td>bob@example.com</td><td>User</td></tr></tbody></table></section><section class="contact"><h2>Contact Us</h2><form action="/submit" method="post"><div class="form-group"><label for="name">Name</label><input type="text" id="name" name="name" required></div><div class="form-group"><label for="email">Email</label><input type="email" id="email" name="email" required></div><div class="form-group"><label for="message">Message</label><textarea id="message" name="message" rows="4"></textarea></div><button type="submit">Send Message</button></form></section><section class="list-section"><h2>Ordered Steps</h2><ol><li>Sign up for an account</li><li>Configure your settings</li><li>Start building</li></ol></section></main><footer><p>&copy; 2024 My Website. All rights reserved.</p><nav><ul><li><a href="/privacy">Privacy Policy</a></li><li><a href="/terms">Terms of Service</a></li></ul></nav></footer></body></html>

Beautified Output

Beautified HTML will appear here...

How to Use HTML Formatter & Beautifier

Paste your HTML code into the input area - whether it's a minified single line, poorly indented code, or generated markup from a CMS. Select 'Beautify' mode to format the HTML with proper indentation and line breaks, making it easy to read and edit. Choose your preferred indent size (2 spaces, 4 spaces, or tabs). Select 'Minify' mode to compress the HTML by removing unnecessary whitespace, comments, and extra line breaks for smaller file size in production. The formatted output appears instantly with stats showing line count, character count, and compression ratio. Use the copy button to grab the result.

Common Use Cases

HTML formatting is essential for front-end developers cleaning up auto-generated HTML from CMS platforms like WordPress, Shopify, or Webflow, debugging email HTML templates that are often delivered as a single minified line, reviewing HTML output from server-side rendering frameworks (Next.js, Nuxt, Rails), preparing HTML for code reviews where readability matters, compressing HTML for production deployment to reduce page weight, cleaning up HTML copied from browser DevTools inspector, formatting HTML snippets for documentation and tutorials, and standardizing HTML code style across team members working on the same project.

Technical Details

The formatter uses a token-based parser that identifies HTML elements, attributes, text nodes, comments, and doctype declarations. Block-level elements (div, section, article, header, footer, main, nav, p, h1-h6, ul, ol, li, table, tr, td, form, fieldset, blockquote) receive line breaks and indentation. Inline elements (span, a, strong, em, b, i, code, small, abbr, label, img) are kept on the same line when their content is short. Void/self-closing elements (br, hr, img, input, meta, link, area, base, col, embed, source, track, wbr) don't require closing tags per HTML5 spec. Content inside pre, script, and style tags is preserved verbatim. The minifier removes HTML comments and collapses whitespace between tags.

Frequently Asked Questions

This tool formats the structure and whitespace of HTML but does not fix structural errors like unclosed tags, mismatched nesting, or invalid attributes. It will add a warning if it detects potential issues. For HTML validation and repair, use the W3C HTML Validator or a tool like HTMLTidy.

Minification removes unnecessary whitespace and comments without changing the document structure, so it should not break your page. However, if your CSS relies on whitespace between inline elements for spacing, minification may cause layout shifts. The 'preserve line breaks' option can help in such cases.

HTML minification typically reduces file size by 10-30% depending on the original formatting. Well-formatted HTML with lots of indentation and comments sees larger savings. Combined with gzip/brotli compression on the server, the total transfer size reduction can be 70-90%. The tool shows the exact compression ratio after processing.