What does auto-detect dedent do?

It finds the longest leading whitespace common to every non-empty line and strips exactly that much from each line — the same behaviour as Python's textwrap.dedent.

Can I mix tabs and spaces?

Yes. Pick either tabs or spaces (and a count) as the indent character. Existing mixed indentation is left as-is unless you dedent first and re-indent.

Is anything uploaded?

No. The transform is a local string operation in your browser.

indent · dedent · auto-dedent

Indent or dedent every line

Q: Are empty lines indented?

No. Empty lines stay empty during indent so you don't get trailing whitespace. Unindent likewise ignores them.

Add or remove leading whitespace. Auto-dedent strips the common leading indent across all lines.

Indent Text Workspace

Lines

38 B

Action

indent

2 spaces

Output

44 B

larger

Diff

bytes

input · code/text

output

  function hello() {
    return 'world';
  }

Quick Start

How to indent or dedent text

Three modes — add a fixed indent, remove a fixed indent, or auto-detect the common leading whitespace and strip it.

01
Paste text
Code, prose, anything.
Tokenisation is Unicode-aware via \p{L}\p{N} property classes — so accented letters, ideographs, and emoji code points all count correctly.
anyUTF-8Unicodecode pointslive
input · textraw · UTF-8
```
A
B
```
loaded · UTF-8UTF-8 · ready
02
Indent
Adds N spaces/tabs to the start of every non-empty line.
Live re-counts run on every keystroke through a memoised reducer, so even multi-megabyte inputs stay smooth in the editor.
indentlivememoisedoptionssnappy
indent · options+2 · live
```
  A
  B
```
options applied · livelive
03
Dedent
Removes up to N spaces/tabs from the start of every line.
Output preserves the original line endings (\n vs \r\n) and trailing whitespace is reported separately so you can spot diff-only changes.
dedentline endingswhitespacediff-cleanreproducible
dedent · counted-2 · ready
```
A
B
```
counted · livecounted
04
Auto-dedent
Strips the longest common prefix of whitespace from all non-empty lines (Python textwrap.dedent style).
Copy writes via the Async Clipboard API; downloads ship as text/plain; charset=utf-8 — nothing leaves your tab.
autoclipboardtext/plainblobclient-side
auto · copiedcommon · done
```
A
B
```
ready · ready to shipsuccess

Pro tips

Text-processing fundamentals worth knowing

Tokenise with Unicode classes

Use \p{L}\p{N} with the u flag so accents, ideographs, and emoji count properly.

Normalise line endings

Convert \r\n to \n before diffing or hashing — Windows-vs-Unix endings produce phantom changes.

Mind invisible characters

Zero-width joiners, BOMs, and non-breaking spaces look identical to ASCII space. Strip them before comparison or storage.

Stream don’t slurp

For multi-megabyte text, iterate line-by-line rather than loading everything to memory — keeps the tab responsive.

Choose collation deliberately

Default JS sort is code-point order, not human alphabetical. Use Intl.Collator for locale-aware sorting.

Re-run after normalisation

NFC vs NFD changes byte length but not visible glyphs. String.prototype.normalize() before counts and comparisons.

Use Cases

When to indent / dedent

Anywhere alignment matters.

Embedding code

Indent a snippet to fit inside a markdown bullet. Tokenisation uses Unicode property classes (\p{L}, \p{N}) with the u flag so accents, ideographs, and emoji code points all count correctly. Surrogate-pair-aware counts mean 🚀 weighs 1, not 2.

Unicode-correct

Heredoc cleanup

Strip the heredoc's leading indent from a template. Result updates as you type — paste and watch totals settle in milliseconds even on multi-megabyte inputs. Heavy work runs through a memoised reducer so the editor never janks.

diff-clean

YAML editing

Re-align nested YAML keys. Output normalises line endings to LF for clean diffs across platforms. Windows-vs-Unix CRLF mismatches disappear, which keeps git blame honest and review comments focused on real changes.

instant counts

PR descriptions

Indent code block snippets in a markdown PR. Code-point counts are stable across NFC/NFD normalisation. Pair with the Reading Time Calculator to layer scan-time on top of raw counts, useful for editorial budgets and SEO meta-description limits.

platform-aware

Copy from PDF

Strip excess leading indent from extracted text. All processing runs client-side — paste sensitive or pre-publish copy without it leaving the tab. The clipboard API writes UTF-8 text/plain so it survives transit to any editor or CMS.

code-point-accurate

Test fixtures

Auto-dedent a heredoc-defined fixture to its canonical form. Same input plus same options always produces identical output, so the tool is safe to embed in CI scripts or doc-generation pipelines without race conditions.

lossless

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What's auto-dedent?

Finds the longest common leading whitespace prefix across all non-empty lines and removes it — like Python's textwrap.dedent.

Are empty lines indented?

No — only non-empty lines get the prefix in Indent mode.

Tabs or spaces?

Pick either. The Amount slider is in units (1 tab or 1 space each).

What if my input mixes tabs and spaces?

Auto-dedent handles mixed indentation by finding the shared prefix; manual dedent removes only the unit you select.

Is anything sent to a server?

No. All processing runs locally.

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