What XML Beautification Means
Beautifying XML means adding line breaks and indentation so that nested elements line up visually, making the document's structure easy to follow at a glance. It's a purely visual change — the elements, attributes, and text your XML contains stay exactly the same; only the whitespace around them changes.
Why Formatted XML Is Easier to Read
Minified or hand-edited XML often arrives as one long line, or with inconsistent indentation that makes nested elements hard to tell apart. Once it's formatted, you can see at a glance which elements sit inside which, making it much faster to review a configuration file, debug an API response, or scan a feed or export for the value you're looking for.
How to Beautify XML Online
- 1
Paste the XML
Add your minified or messy XML into the XML Input box on CleanTextly's XML Formatter.
- 2
Choose the indentation style
Pick 2 spaces, 4 spaces, or a tab, depending on how you like nested elements indented.
- 3
Format the XML
Click Format. The XML declaration, comments, and CDATA sections are preserved exactly as written, and a specific error is shown instead if the markup isn't well-formed.
- 4
Copy or download the result
Copy the beautified XML to your clipboard, or download it as an .xml file.
CleanTextly's XML Formatter & Beautifier does exactly this in your browser, with nothing uploaded to a server.
Before and After Example
Minified XML Before and After Beautifying
Before
<order><id>1042</id><item><name>Widget</name><qty>3</qty></item></order>
After
<order>
<id>1042</id>
<item>
<name>Widget</name>
<qty>3</qty>
</item>
</order>What Happens if the XML Is Malformed
XML is stricter than HTML, so a formatter can't always guess what you meant. If a tag is mismatched, an attribute value is left unterminated, or the XML declaration appears more than once, CleanTextly's formatter reports a specific error instead of silently repairing the markup or guessing at a result. You'll need to fix the underlying issue in the XML itself before it can be formatted.
When an Online XML Formatter Is Useful
Reading Minified XML
See the actual structure of a config file or export instead of one long, unreadable line.
Inspecting API Responses
Format an XML API response so its nesting is easy to follow while you debug.
Reviewing Feeds & Configs
Beautify an RSS/Atom feed, SOAP payload, or config file before reading through it.
Checking Structure Before Reuse
Confirm an element's structure is what you expect before copying XML elsewhere.
Need to go the other way — compacting readable XML back down for storage or transmission? CleanTextly's XML Minifier handles that instead.