🧹 HTML Formatter & Beautifier

The HTML Formatter re-indents messy, minified, or copy-pasted HTML into clean, consistently-nested markup that is easy to read and diff — and can minify it back down when you need the smallest size. It is a formatter, not a validator: it tidies structure and whitespace without changing what your HTML means.

How to Use This Tool

Paste your HTML and press Beautify for readable, indented output, or Minify to strip whitespace between tags. Copy the result from the output box.

What This Tool Checks

It normalises indentation based on tag nesting and handles void elements (like img and br) and inline elements sensibly. It does not parse the HTML into a full DOM, so it will not fix genuinely broken or unclosed tags — it re-formats what you give it.

Understanding Your Results

Beautified output shows the nesting structure clearly, which makes misplaced closing tags easy to spot by eye. Minified output removes the whitespace between tags for a smaller payload, at the cost of readability.

How to Fix Common Problems

If the indentation looks wrong, it usually reflects a real nesting problem in the source (an unclosed tag pushes everything after it one level too deep) — which is useful diagnostic information. For production builds, use a proper build-tool minifier rather than pasting by hand.

SEO Best Practices

Keep a readable, beautified copy in your source files and let your build pipeline minify for production. Use beautify to make a diff reviewable before committing. Do not rely on a whitespace formatter to validate HTML — use a proper validator for that.

Example

A single-line minified snippet like <div><p>Hello</p></div> becomes a three-line indented block that clearly shows the paragraph nested inside the div; minifying it returns the compact single line.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Expecting the formatter to repair broken markup — it re-indents, it does not fix structure. Shipping beautified (un-minified) HTML to production adds unnecessary bytes.