HTML Formatter
Paste minified or messy HTML below to instantly format it with proper indentation. Everything runs in your browser — nothing is sent to any server.
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Why Format HTML?
Well-formatted HTML is easier to read, debug, and maintain. Minified or auto-generated HTML often lacks indentation and line breaks, making it difficult to follow the nesting structure. Running it through a formatter restores consistent indentation so you can quickly spot unclosed tags, misplaced elements, and structural issues.
How This Formatter Works
The formatter uses a custom parser that walks the raw HTML character by character to identify tags, attributes, text nodes, comments, and CDATA sections. It tracks the current indentation depth and increments it for block-level and container elements (such as div, table, ul, html, head, and body). Inline elements (span, a, strong, em, etc.) and self-closing void elements (img, br, input, meta, etc.) are handled without adding unnecessary line breaks.
Formatter vs. Minifier
Formatting (beautifying) makes HTML human-readable by adding line breaks and indentation. Minifying does the opposite — it strips whitespace and comments to reduce file size for production. The Minify button in this tool performs a basic minification pass. For CSS, check out our CSS Minifier, which also shows byte savings. For XML files, our XML Formatter uses the browser's DOMParser for strict well-formedness validation.
Privacy Note
All processing is done entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your HTML is never uploaded, transmitted, or stored on any server. You can use this tool with sensitive code snippets safely.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will the formatter fix broken HTML?
The formatter does not attempt to repair invalid HTML — it reformats the structure as-is. If you have unclosed tags or misplaced elements, the output will reflect those issues. For validation and repair, use a dedicated HTML validator such as the W3C Markup Validation Service.
Does it support HTML5 custom elements and data attributes?
Yes. Custom elements (like <my-component>) and data-* attributes are treated as regular tags and attributes. They will be indented correctly. The formatter does not require a strict list of valid element names.
What does "Wrap attributes" do?
When enabled, each attribute on a tag gets its own line with one extra level of indentation. This is useful for tags with many attributes (such as form inputs or SVG elements) where keeping all attributes on one line makes the code very wide and hard to read.
Can I format HTML embedded in a larger file?
Yes — just paste the HTML portion you want to format. The formatter does not require a complete document starting with <!DOCTYPE html>. It handles HTML fragments, partial pages, and template snippets just as well as full documents.
What is the difference between this tool and the XML Formatter?
HTML is more lenient than XML — it allows self-closing void elements without the trailing slash, unquoted attributes in some parsers, and optional closing tags. The XML Formatter uses the browser's strict XML parser, which will reject most real-world HTML. Use this HTML Formatter for HTML files and the XML Formatter for strict XML documents like SVG or XHTML.
