What formatting style is applied?

Each selector and property is placed on its own line with proper indentation. Opening braces stay on the selector line, and closing braces align with the selector.

Can it format CSS preprocessors?

This tool formats standard CSS. While it can process SCSS/SASS syntax, some preprocessor-specific features may not format perfectly.

Does formatting affect performance?

For production, use minified CSS. But during development, formatted CSS helps debugging. Our tool can format minified CSS back to readable form.

Is my CSS data private?

Yes! All formatting happens locally in your browser. Your stylesheets are never sent to external servers.

CSS Formatter – Format & Beautify CSS Online (Free Tool)

Free online CSS Formatter tool to format and beautify CSS stylesheets with proper indentation. Clean up minified or messy CSS code and make it easy to read and debug. Perfect for web developers working with stylesheets and CSS frameworks. All formatting happens locally in your browser.

What is CSS Formatter?

CSS Formatter beautifies CSS, SCSS-style nested rules, and PostCSS output with one declaration per line, consistent spacing, and lowercase hex colours. Useful for cleaning up minified stylesheets, normalising team-authored CSS, or comparing two stylesheets line-by-line in a diff. Runs entirely in the browser.

Why use this tool?

No registration, account, or installation required
No API keys to manage and no rate limits to monitor
100% free with no hidden costs or daily limits
Works with very large inputs (multi-megabyte JSON, long regex patterns, big tables)
No telemetry on the tokens, payloads, or code you paste in

How to use

Paste your input into the css formatter area
Configure the options if the defaults don't match your case
Click the action button and inspect the result
Copy the output to your clipboard or download as a file

Examples

Unminify production CSS

A one-line minified bundle becomes a readable stylesheet with rules grouped and properties aligned — easy to inspect specific selectors.

Standardise spacing

Mixed styles (margin:0 vs margin: 0) collapse to a consistent format defined by your options.

Sort declarations

Toggle "sort declarations" to alphabetise properties within each rule — helps diff stylesheets across versions.

Common use cases

Inspecting third-party / vendor CSS from a CDN
Cleaning up CSS that came out of a design-to-code tool
Normalising team-authored CSS before committing
Building consistent input for a linting / static-analysis tool
Producing readable CSS for inclusion in blog posts and docs

Troubleshooting

Vendor prefixes got stripped.: They shouldn't be — formatting preserves all properties. If they're missing, run a separate autoprefixer step instead.
CSS variables (--foo) got dropped.: Custom properties are valid CSS and should survive formatting. If they vanish, check the input for typos: the property name must start with double dashes.
Comments moved to weird positions.: Block comments inside a rule end up before the next declaration. Move them outside the rule or use /*! ... */ to mark them as preserved.

Frequently Asked Questions

Formatted CSS is easier to read, debug, and maintain. It helps identify errors, understand the cascade, and collaborate with other developers.

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