Paste CSS that is squashed onto one line, copied from a browser tool or written inconsistently, and get it back neatly laid out. Each selector and declaration goes on its own line, nested blocks are indented, and comments, strings and url() values are left exactly as written.
Production sites usually serve CSS with every space removed, which saves bytes but makes the file hard to read. When you want to see how a layout was built or why a style is being overridden, formatting the file is the first step. Once each rule has its own lines, you can search for a class name and see everything that applies to it.
Look for the order of rules, because later rules win when two have the same weight. A formatted file makes that order easy to see. It also shows you which declarations sit inside media queries, since those blocks are indented under the query that switches them on.
Most style disagreements in CSS are about layout rather than meaning: where the brace goes, how many spaces to indent, whether selectors share a line. A formatter ends the argument by applying one answer to every file. The usual convention is the opening brace on the same line as the selector, one declaration per line, and a space after each colon.
Format on a copy of the code before you commit, and commit the formatting change on its own. Then the history shows layout changes separately from real edits, and reviewers can skip the noise.
A formatter works on the shape of the text, not its meaning. It will not tell you that a property name is misspelled, that a value is invalid, or that two rules cancel each other out. If a rule has no effect in the browser, open the developer tools and check which declarations are crossed out.
It also cannot recover a stylesheet that is missing a closing brace. The text after the gap is treated as part of the earlier block, so the indentation drifts and the output ends one level deep. That drift is a useful clue: if the last line is indented, look for the brace that never closed.
It rewrites the layout of a stylesheet without changing what it does. Every declaration goes on its own line, blocks are indented to show nesting, and spacing around colons, commas and braces is made consistent.
No. It only changes white space between tokens. Strings, url() values, comments, escapes and numbers are copied unchanged, so the formatted file and the original behave identically in a browser.
Anything inside braces is indented one level deeper than its parent. A rule inside @media is indented once, and its declarations twice. For example, '@media (min-width:600px){a{color:red}}' becomes a media block containing an a rule containing color: red.
The last declaration in a block may legally omit its semicolon. The formatter adds it so that every declaration ends the same way, and so that adding a new line later cannot break the one above it.
Formatting makes CSS bigger and easier to read; minifying does the opposite. Use the CSS minifier when you are ready to publish, and keep the formatted version as the one you edit.
Related: CSS minifier, CSS shadow generator, CSS layout generator.
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