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CSS Formatter

Format and beautify CSS stylesheets.

Last updated:

Processed locally — your files are not uploaded to any server.
Comprehensive Guide & Specifications

Everything you need to know about using CSS Formatter effectively.

What is CSS Formatter and Why Use It?

Stylesheets that have been minified for delivery, or written quickly under deadline, become hard to scan long before they become hard to run. This lays rules, selectors and declarations out one per line with consistent indentation and spacing around braces and colons, changing whitespace only, so the compiled result is byte-for-byte equivalent in effect. Declaration order is preserved throughout, which is not a detail: later rules of equal specificity override earlier ones, and reordering them would silently change how the page looks. Reach for it when reviewing a stylesheet in a pull request, when picking apart a third-party theme, or when a compressed file has to be edited by hand. What it will not do is tell you a property is misspelled or a value is invalid — formatting is blind to meaning, and your browser's dev tools, which show which declarations were actually applied, are the better instrument for that.

Step-by-Step Instructions

  1. 1

    Paste minified or unformatted CSS into the input window.

  2. 2

    Choose formatting options like indentation size and selector spacing.

  3. 3

    Click Format to review, copy, or download the formatted stylesheet.

Formula / Calculations Explained

CSS Ruleset & Declaration Block Formatting

Parses selectors, at-rules, and property-value declarations to organize rules with consistent indentation, braces, and line breaks.

Important Considerations

  • Declaration order is preserved, which matters because later rules of equal specificity override earlier ones.
  • Formatting will not flag an invalid property or a typo'd value — your browser's dev tools are better for that.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can it format modern CSS features like CSS variables and nesting?▼

Yes, our formatter supports custom properties (--var), modern nesting, media queries, and keyframe animations.

Does formatting alter specificity or rule cascading?▼

No. The order of declarations and selectors remains intact, guaranteeing identical browser rendering.

Are my stylesheet files safe from server logging?▼

Yes, formatting runs 100% locally in your browser with zero network requests.

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