Whitespace Cleaner

Trim, collapse, and clean whitespace from any text. Remove leading/trailing spaces, collapse multiple spaces into one, remove blank lines, convert tabs, and more.

Input Text
Operations

Frequently Asked Questions

When copying from PDFs, word processors, HTML pages, or email clients, the clipboard often includes hidden characters: multiple spaces where layout was used for alignment, hard line breaks from fixed-width columns, non-breaking spaces ( ), zero-width spaces, and tab characters used as column separators.
A regular space (U+0020) allows word-wrapping and is collapsed by HTML. A non-breaking space (U+00A0,  ) prevents line breaks at that position and is not collapsed. Non-breaking spaces often cause display issues when pasted into text fields because they look like spaces but behave differently in code and databases.
Trim means removing leading and trailing whitespace from a string. Most languages have a built-in: PHP: trim($str); JavaScript: str.trim(); Python: str.strip(); Java: str.trim(). ltrim/rtrim trim only one end.
To normalise whitespace: str.trim().replace(/\s+/g, ' ') — trims both ends and collapses multiple spaces. For lines: str.split('\n').map(l => l.trim()).filter(l => l).join('\n'). To remove ALL whitespace: str.replace(/\s/g, '').
PDFs store text as positioned glyphs, not flowing paragraphs. When text is extracted, lines from column layouts and headers often appear as separate paragraphs with blank lines between them. The "Remove blank lines" and "Collapse blank lines" operations fix the most common cases.
In HTML, consecutive whitespace is normally collapsed to a single space by the browser renderer. This is why HTML source code can include readable line breaks and indentation without affecting visual output. The white-space: pre CSS property disables collapsing.
LF (\n): Unix/Linux/macOS. CRLF (\r\n): Windows. CR (\r): Old Mac. When pasting Windows text into Unix tools, visible ^M characters appear. Use "Trim lines" to remove stray CR characters.
A tab is a single character whose display width is configurable (usually 4 or 8 spaces). Mixing tabs and spaces causes alignment issues because tab width varies between tools. Many style guides (Python PEP 8, Prettier) standardise on spaces. "Tabs → 4 spaces" converts tabs to a fixed-width equivalent.
Trailing spaces in database fields cause comparison failures: "John " !== "John". Leading spaces break sorting and search. Extra blank lines in CSV, JSON, or YAML can cause parse errors. Inconsistent newline characters cause diffs to show entire files as changed.
A zero-width space (U+200B) is an invisible character that allows word breaking but takes no visual space. It appears in text copied from web pages and some word processors. Use Find & Replace with the literal character to remove it — it is invisible in editors but causes problems in data fields, URLs, and comparisons.

About This Whitespace Cleaner

This free whitespace cleaner provides targeted operations for trimming, collapsing, and removing whitespace from any text. Each operation targets a specific whitespace problem, giving you precise control over text normalisation.

When to use this tool

  • Cleaning pasted text from PDFs, Word, or HTML sources
  • Normalising whitespace before inserting text into databases
  • Preparing text for comparison or search operations
  • Converting tab-indented code to space-indented

Standards & References

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