CSS Formatter & Beautifier
Format and beautify CSS into clean, readable stylesheets directly in your browser.
Formatted CSS will appear here.How to format CSS
- Paste CSS in the input panel.
- Choose the indentation.
- Click Format CSS.
- Copy or download.
What this CSS formatter does
- Re-indents nested rules consistently.
- Puts each declaration on its own line.
- Splits multi-selector rules.
- Preserves comments, strings, URLs, and data URLs.
CSS Formatter vs. CSS Minifier
A formatter adds indentation for readability; a minifier removes whitespace for size.
When formatting CSS is useful
Formatting helps whenever a stylesheet needs to be read rather than just applied by a browser: cleaning up a file that's grown messy over many edits, expanding CSS generated by a build tool or preprocessor for review, or restructuring a stylesheet so its selectors and rules are easier to scan while debugging a layout issue.
Practical examples
- Messy stylesheets - inconsistent indentation and cramped multi-selector rules become evenly spaced and easy to scan.
- Generated CSS - output from a build tool or minifier gets expanded back into a readable, line-by-line form for review.
- Debugging - spotting a missing brace or a selector that isn't matching becomes easier once each rule and declaration has its own clearly indented line.
Selectors, declarations, and nesting
Formatting puts each selector in a multi-selector rule on its own line, gives every declaration its own line inside the rule body, and indents nested rules one level deeper than their parent. This makes it far easier to see which declarations belong to which selector, especially in stylesheets that mix flat rules with nested ones.
Reviewing formatted CSS
Check that nested rules line up with the selector hierarchy you expect - a nesting level that looks too shallow or too deep often points to a missing closing brace. It's also worth confirming that comments, string values, and URLs came through unchanged, since those should never be altered by formatting.
Frequently asked questions
- Does this CSS formatter upload my code?
- No. Parsing and formatting run entirely in your browser.
- Does it support minified CSS?
- Yes. Minified CSS is expanded to a readable multi-line form.
- Will formatting change how my styles apply?
- No. Reindenting and rewrapping rules doesn't add, remove, or reorder selectors, declarations, or values, so the styles a browser applies stay exactly the same. Only the whitespace in the source changes.
- Does it support modern CSS nesting syntax?
- Yes. Nested rules using native CSS nesting are indented to reflect their nesting depth. Since native nesting is a newer browser feature, double-check your target browsers support it, or that a build step compiles it down, before relying on it in production.
- Why does generated CSS from a build tool still look inconsistent after formatting?
- Formatting fixes indentation and line breaks, but it can't reorganize the underlying structure a build tool or preprocessor produced - repeated selectors, unusual property ordering, or verbose output are easier to read once formatted, but resolving them usually means adjusting the source or build config instead.