Whitespace Remover

Clean up text by removing extra spaces, blank lines, tabs, and trailing whitespace.

Free to use. Runs in your browser.

A whitespace remover strips unwanted spaces, tabs, blank lines, and trailing whitespace from text. Common modes: trim each line (removes leading/trailing), collapse multiple spaces to one, remove blank lines, and convert tabs. 'Remove all whitespace' collapses everything, useful for URL slugs or minification, but will break code indentation. All processing runs client-side.

Paste text below, the cleaned output updates instantly with live character counts.

Trim linesCollapse spacesRemove blank linesConvert tabsRemove ALL whitespace

Input (88 chars)

Output (60 chars)

Hello World

This has extra spaces

And blank lines
And tabs

Removed 28 characters of whitespace, making the text 32% smaller

Why Whitespace Matters More Than You Think

Invisible characters cause visible problems. Extra spaces break CSV parsing, trailing whitespace fails string comparisons, blank lines inflate line counts, and tabs mixed with spaces create inconsistent indentation. You can't see these issues, but your code, data pipelines, and diff tools can.

This tool gives you granular control over exactly which whitespace to remove. Trim line edges, collapse multiple spaces, strip blank lines, convert tabs, or nuke everything at once. Each option is independent, so you fix exactly the problem you have without breaking what's working.

Types of Whitespace

Character	Name	Common Source	Problems It Causes
' '	Space	Keyboard, copy-paste	Multiple spaces break alignment
\t	Tab	Tab key, some editors	Mixed indent, Python errors
\n	Newline (LF)	Enter key (Unix/Mac)	Extra blank lines in output
\r\n	Carriage return + LF	Enter key (Windows)	^M characters in Unix tools
	Non-breaking space	HTML, Word, web copy	Invisible, fails string matching
U+200B	Zero-width space	Web pages, PDFs	Completely invisible, breaks everything

Common Problems and Fixes

Problem

Trailing spaces in CSV data

Invisible trailing spaces cause "John " != "John" comparisons to fail. Database imports reject rows, joins don't match, and deduplication misses obvious duplicates. Fix: Trim line edges.

Problem

Mixed tabs and spaces in code

Python throws IndentationError. Other languages display inconsistently across editors with different tab-width settings. Fix: Convert tabs to spaces.

Problem

Copy-paste formatting artefacts

Text from web pages, PDFs, or Word contains non-breaking spaces, zero-width characters, and irregular spacing. Fix: Collapse spaces to normalise everything.

Problem

Git diff noise

Trailing whitespace and blank lines show up as changes in diffs, obscuring real code changes. Many teams use git hooks to strip trailing whitespace on commit. Fix: Trim edges + remove blank lines.

What Each Option Does

The options combine, so you can fix exactly the problem you have. Here is precisely what each one changes.

Option	What it changes
Trim lines	Removes leading and trailing whitespace from every line.
Collapse spaces	Reduces runs of spaces and tabs within a line to a single space, and drops spaces sitting next to a line break.
Remove blank lines	Collapses runs of blank lines down to at most one, and strips blank lines at the very start and end.
Convert tabs	Turns each tab into a single space.
Remove ALL whitespace	Strips every space, tab, and line break, joining everything into one continuous string.

Safe for Code, or Not?

Whitespace carries meaning in many languages, so reach for these options carefully on source code.

Remove blank lines is the only option that leaves indentation untouched, so it is the safest on code.
Trim lines removes leading spaces, which is indentation. Avoid it on Python, YAML, and anything where the left margin matters.
Collapse spaces flattens aligned columns and indentation runs, so it can change how code reads or behaves.
Remove ALL whitespace destroys structure entirely. Use it for slugs and compacting, never on code you intend to run.

For trailing-space cleanup that keeps indentation intact, your editor's "trim trailing whitespace on save" setting (VS Code, Sublime, Vim) is the better tool.

Removing Whitespace in Code

For one-off cleanups, paste your text above. When it is part of a script, these idioms cover the common cases.

Language	Trim both ends	Collapse to single spaces
JavaScript	s.trim()	s.replace(/\s+/g, " ")
Python	s.strip()	" ".join(s.split())
Ruby	s.strip	s.split.join(" ")
PHP	trim($s)	preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', $s)
Bash	sed 's/^ //;s/ $//'	tr -s ' '

To strip every space entirely, swap the collapse pattern for one that replaces whitespace with nothing, such as s.replace(/\s/g, "") in JavaScript.

Before and After

Before

  John Smith  

  jane[at]example.com  

  
  Mike   Johnson

After (trim + collapse + remove blanks)

John Smith
jane[at]example.com
Mike Johnson

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Regex Tester

Test whitespace patterns before cleanup

How to use this tool

Paste your text with unwanted whitespace

Select which types of whitespace to remove

Copy the cleaned result

Common uses

Cleaning up copy-pasted text from web pages and PDFs
Fixing whitespace issues in CSV and data files
Removing trailing spaces before git commits
Normalising text formatting from multiple sources

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Frequently Asked Questions

What types of whitespace does this tool remove?

It can remove leading/trailing whitespace, extra spaces between words, blank lines, tabs, and all whitespace. Each option is independently toggleable so you can combine them for the exact cleanup you need.

Will this break my code?

Use caution with code. 'Remove all whitespace' collapses indentation and breaks Python, YAML, and other whitespace-sensitive languages. 'Remove blank lines' is the safest option because it leaves indentation alone; note that 'Trim lines' also strips leading indentation, so avoid it on indented code. For JavaScript or CSS minification, use a dedicated minifier instead.

Is my text processed on a server?

No. Everything happens in your browser using native JavaScript. Your text never leaves your device, which matters for sensitive content, NDAs, customer data, or anything covered by GDPR / HIPAA.

What is the difference between 'Trim lines' and 'Collapse spaces'?

'Trim lines' removes leading and trailing whitespace on each line (like `line.strip()` in Python or `.trim()` in JavaScript). 'Collapse spaces' reduces multiple internal spaces to one (so 'hello world' becomes 'hello world'). You usually want both enabled for pasted text.

Does it handle non-breaking spaces?

'Remove ALL whitespace' catches non-breaking spaces (U+00A0) via the \s regex class. The other options focus on standard spaces and tabs. Non-breaking spaces are common in text copied from Microsoft Word or web pages and can cause 'invisible' duplicates in lists, use 'Remove ALL' then re-add spaces manually if needed.

How do I preserve indentation but remove trailing spaces?

Enable only 'Trim lines' with 'Remove trailing only', actually, this tool trims both ends. For git-friendly trailing-space-only cleanup, most editors (VS Code, Sublime, Vim) have a 'trim trailing whitespace on save' setting that preserves indentation.

What about Windows line endings (CRLF)?

Carriage returns (\r) are treated as whitespace by all options. If you need to preserve CRLF line endings, paste the result into a text editor that can set line endings (VS Code, Notepad++) before saving.

Can I use this to minify HTML or JSON?

'Remove ALL whitespace' is too aggressive, it breaks string content. Use dedicated minifiers (html-minifier, JSON.stringify(obj) without indentation, or our JSON Formatter in 'compact' mode) for that.

How much whitespace does the typical pasted text contain?

Text copied from PDFs often has 15 to 30% extra whitespace. Copy-paste from web pages can add 5 to 15%. Emails and chat exports often have trailing spaces on every line. This tool typically removes 5 to 40% of the character count from typical 'dirty' text.

What's the difference between this and Find & Replace?

Find & Replace requires you to know each whitespace pattern you want to change. This tool handles them all at once with sensible defaults, shows you the before/after size, and doesn't modify your source file, you copy the cleaned output.

Results are for general informational purposes only and should be checked before use. They are not professional advice. See our Disclaimer and Terms of Service.