Can it recover comments from minified CSS?

No — comments removed during minification are lost.

What indentation does it use?

Standard two-space style-guide formatting.

Will it change how the CSS works?

No, only whitespace and layout change.

It's designed for plain CSS; nesting may not be preserved perfectly.

Yes, everything runs in your browser.

Can it fix broken CSS?

It formats structure but won't repair syntax errors.

CSS Beautifier

Reformat compressed CSS with clean two-space indentation.

Reading time:: 2 min
Last updated:: 5 August 2026
Price:: Free, no signup

Your text

Results (live)

Type or paste text to see the result.

What the CSS Beautifier does

Paste a mangled or minified stylesheet and get it back readable: one rule per block, properties indented, braces where humans expect them. A wall of minified CSS becomes something you can actually edit.

Indentation and line breaks follow common style-guide conventions, so the output drops cleanly into most projects.

Why the CSS Beautifier is useful

You inherit minified CSS more often than you'd think: a theme with no source files, a vendor's compressed output, a colleague's 'optimised' commit. Editing minified CSS by hand is how bugs are born.

Beautifying first gives you a readable base to work from — and to diff against when something changes.

Also known as: css beautifier, css formatter, free css beautifier, online css beautifier, css beautifier online free, css beautifier tool, best css beautifier tool.

How to use the CSS Beautifier

1
Paste the CSS
Minified, mangled or just inconsistently formatted.
2
Get the readable version
Clean indentation and structure, instantly.
3
Copy into your editor
Edit comfortably, then minify again for production.

Key features

Consistent indentation and spacing
One declaration per line
Handles minified or messy input
Copy and download the result

Benefits

Make inherited CSS editable again
Read vendor stylesheets comfortably
Standardise formatting across a team

Real-life use cases

Rescuing a theme

A site owner beautifies a purchased theme's minified CSS to change the brand colour.

Code review

A lead beautifies a compressed diff to review what actually changed.

Learning from a site

A student beautifies a small copied snippet to study how an effect is built.

Tips for the best results

Beautify a copy — keep the original file untouched.
Comments stripped by minification can't be recovered.
Reformat before diffing two versions so the comparison is meaningful.

Conclusion

Turn any stylesheet back into code a human can read and edit.

Frequently asked questions

Can it recover comments from minified CSS?: No — comments removed during minification are lost.
What indentation does it use?: Standard two-space style-guide formatting.
Will it change how the CSS works?: No, only whitespace and layout change.
Does it handle SCSS?: It's designed for plain CSS; nesting may not be preserved perfectly.
Is my code private?: Yes, everything runs in your browser.
Can it fix broken CSS?: It formats structure but won't repair syntax errors.

Related tools you may need

JavaScript Beautifier — Reformat minified JavaScript with two-space indentation.
SQL Formatter — Beautify SQL queries with keyword capitalization.
XML Formatter — Beautify XML with clean two-space indentation.
HTML Formatter — Pretty-print HTML with clean indentation.
JSON Formatter — Validate and pretty-print JSON with 2-space indentation.
Border Radius Generator — Generate CSS border-radius shortcuts.
JavaScript Minifier — Basic JavaScript minifier — strips comments and extra whitespace.
CSS Minifier — Strip whitespace and comments from CSS in one click.
Cron Expression Explainer — Translate a 5-field cron expression into plain English.

Keep exploring

Browse the full tools directory, filter by category, or read guides on the Text Tools Hub blog.