Fair usage limits apply to this tool.

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Reformats compressed CSS into readable code; nested rules like @media and @keyframes may not format correctly.

Introduction

Minified or hand-compressed CSS is efficient for a browser to download but hard for a person to read — everything runs together with no line breaks, no indentation, and usually no comments. Beautifying does the reverse of minifying: it takes CSS in that compressed state and rebuilds the line breaks, spacing, and indentation that make it readable again, without changing what any rule does. This matters whenever a person, not a browser, needs to actually look at the CSS — to learn from it, check it, or find a specific rule inside it.

How This Tool Formats Your CSS

Pasting CSS in and clicking Beautify rebuilds the code as one rule per block: each selector on its own line, followed by its properties indented underneath, one property per line. Property values themselves — colors, units, shorthand — are left exactly as you pasted them; only spacing and structure change. Two details worth knowing about how selectors and values are handled:

Grouped selectors stay together. A rule with several selectors separated by commas, like .card, .card-highlight, .card-featured { ... }, is kept as a single selector line rather than being split one-per-line the way some formatters do.
Values containing a colon are handled correctly. Only the first colon in each declaration is treated as the divider between the property and its value, so a value that itself contains a colon — a web address like background: url(http://example.com/img.png) is the most common case — isn't cut off at the wrong point.

Comments are removed as part of this process, which is worth knowing if your stylesheet includes a license or attribution notice — see the note below.

What to Know Before You Use It

This tool works well on straightforward, flat CSS — a plain list of selectors and their properties. It has two specific limitations worth knowing before pasting real-world code:

Nested rules don't format correctly. If your CSS includes an @media query, an @keyframes block, or any rule nested inside another block, the section around it is likely to come out garbled rather than cleanly indented. This tool rebuilds structure by matching opening and closing braces one pair at a time, and doesn't track how deep inside another block a brace sits — so a rule nested inside @media gets its content mixed in with the @media block itself instead of staying properly nested. If your stylesheet uses media queries or keyframes, check that section of the output carefully, or beautify a version with the nested parts removed.
All comments are removed, with no exception. Unlike CSS Minifier on this site, which keeps comments written as license or attribution notices, this beautifier strips every comment in the pasted code. If your stylesheet includes a license header you need to keep, save a copy of it before beautifying.

Neither of these affects what the CSS does — the underlying rules and values aren't changed, only how much of the structure is correctly reformatted into readable form.

When This Is the Right Tool

Reading someone else's minified CSS to learn from it. Viewing a real site's stylesheet through a browser's developer tools often shows compressed, unreadable CSS — pasting it here and beautifying it makes it possible to actually study how a layout or component is built, a genuine digital-literacy use beyond just running the tool on your own code.
Reviewing a student's submitted CSS. Code copied and pasted between editors sometimes loses its original formatting; beautifying it before reading makes review and feedback faster.
Debugging a layout that isn't working. Dense, unformatted CSS is harder to scan for the rule that's causing a problem — formatting it first usually makes the actual issue easier to spot.

If the CSS you're working with relies on @media queries or other nested blocks and you need reliable formatting, a code editor's built-in formatter is a better fit than this tool — see the limitation above. For a flat stylesheet without nested rules, which covers a lot of introductory web-design work, this tool is a fast way to get readable output without installing anything.

Example

A student finds a template site's CSS interesting and wants to understand how a card layout is built. The live stylesheet is minified into one dense line, so before they can actually read it, they paste it into this tool and beautify it. The rules split apart into a readable structure, making it possible to see which selector controls which part of the layout, how spacing is set with margin and padding, and which colors are reused across the design. If the copied stylesheet includes @media queries for responsive behavior, that section needs a second look afterward — see "What to Know Before You Use It" above.

FAQs

Does beautifying change what the CSS does?

No. Only spacing, line breaks, and indentation change — the selectors, properties, and values stay the same.

What happens to comments in my CSS?

They're removed. This tool doesn't keep license or attribution comments the way CSS Minifier does — save a copy first if you need to keep one.

Will it correctly format CSS with media queries?

Not reliably. Rules nested inside @media, @keyframes, or similar blocks can come out garbled — check that part of the output, or use a code editor's formatter for stylesheets that rely heavily on nesting.

Can I beautify minified CSS copied from another site?

Yes — that's a common, legitimate use for learning how a page is built. Be mindful of the source site's own terms if you plan to reuse the actual code rather than just study it.

Is my code saved anywhere?

No. The pasted CSS is processed to produce the formatted result and isn't stored afterward; only the fact that the tool was used is recorded, not the code itself.