beautify html ♡ tools

what is it

beautify html is a free online tool that takes messy, cramped, or oddly indented html and reformats it into clean, consistently indented code. it's part of a larger site called codeutility, which offers the same kind of formatting tool for a bunch of other languages too (css, javascript, python, sql, and more), but this page focuses on the html version specifically.

it doesn't change what your page does or how it looks in the browser, it only changes how the code itself is written and spaced out, making it easier for a human to read.

what it's for

html can end up messy in a few common situations:

you copied code from somewhere that stripped out all the line breaks, leaving one giant unreadable line.
you've been editing a file for a long time and the indentation drifted, with some tags nested two spaces in and others eight.
a tool or export process (like some website builders) generated the html automatically, and it came out minified or oddly structured.
you're trying to read someone else's code (a template, a snippet from a forum, an old project) and it's just hard to follow as-is.

in any of these cases, running the code through a beautifier fixes the indentation and spacing automatically, so tags nest visually the way they nest logically, making the structure of the page much easier to follow at a glance.

how to use it

go to beautifyhtml.codeutility.io.
paste your html into the editor box, or use the upload button to load an .html file directly from your computer.
click the beautify button. the tool reformats the code in place, fixing indentation and line breaks according to standard conventions.
copy the cleaned up result back into your own file, or use the download button to save it as a new file, or the share button to get a link to it.

tip: there's an indent setting near the top of the editor that lets you choose how many spaces (or tabs) each nested level should use. this site's tutorials use 2 spaces per level, so it's worth matching that if you're cleaning up code meant to go alongside them.

a quick example

messy, unindented html like this:

<div class="box"><h1>title</h1><p>some text goes here</p></div>

comes out looking like this after being beautified:

<div class="box">
  <h1>title</h1>
  <p>some text goes here</p>
</div>

same exact code, same exact result in the browser, just far easier to read and edit afterward.

things to keep in mind

it's an online tool, so avoid pasting anything containing private data, api keys, or unpublished content you wouldn't want passing through a third party server.
it reformats structure and spacing, it doesn't fix actual mistakes in your html, like a missing closing tag or a typo in an attribute name. always double check the result still works the way you expect.
signing in (with google or github) is optional and only needed if you want to save formatted snippets to an account for later. pasting, beautifying, and copying the result works fine without an account.

next step: once your html is cleanly formatted, it's a lot easier to follow along with the basic html document structure tutorial and spot exactly where each piece fits.