Indent / Unindent Text

Shift a block of text or code left or right in one go. Indent every line by a number of spaces or tabs, or add a prefix such as “> ” for an email quote or “// ” for comments; outdent by a set amount; or strip the indentation that all lines share, which is what you need after copying a nested snippet out of a larger file. Two more modes convert tabs to spaces using proper tab stops, or turn leading spaces into tabs.

How to use this tool

1. Paste the text or code.
2. Choose indent, outdent, remove common indentation, tabs → spaces or spaces → tabs.
3. Set the amount, what to indent with, and the tab width your editor uses.
4. Copy the result.

Formula

Tab stop: a tab at column c moves to the next multiple of the tab width, c + (w − c mod w)

Removing common indentation works like Python’s textwrap.dedent: it finds the longest run of spaces and tabs that every non-blank line starts with and removes it, leaving relative indentation intact. Outdent removes up to N columns of leading whitespace from each line and never splits a tab. Spaces → tabs only changes the indentation at the start of lines, so spaces inside the text are kept. Blank lines are left alone when indenting unless you untick that option.

Example

The sample Python snippet is indented by 4 spaces throughout. “Remove the indentation all lines share” gives def greet(name): at the left margin with its body at 4 and 8 spaces, as it would be at the top of a file; 4 of 5 lines change (the blank line stays as it is).