Our Mission

The developer tools landscape is crowded with sites that require sign-ups, show your data to their servers, or throttle features behind paywalls. DevTools was built to be the opposite — a permanent, free, offline-capable suite where every operation happens entirely inside your browser. No account needed, no upload, no tracking.

When you paste an API response or a Kubernetes secret into a DevTools formatter, that data never travels across a network. It stays on your machine. You can verify this yourself by opening your browser's Developer Tools (F12 key) and watching the Network tab — you will see zero outbound requests carrying your data.

What We Build

DevTools currently provides six core utilities that developers use daily:

JSON Formatter — Supports stringify, parse, format, minify, and an interactive tree view for navigating deeply nested objects. Essential when debugging REST API responses or validating configuration files before deployment.

XML Formatter — Handles well-formedness validation, CDATA sections, namespace-aware formatting, and interactive tree visualization. Still the backbone of SOAP web services, enterprise integrations, and countless configuration systems.

YAML Tools — Provides bidirectional YAML-to-JSON conversion, critical for Kubernetes manifests and Docker Compose files where a single indentation mistake can bring down a deployment. The interactive tree view is particularly useful for large Kubernetes specs.

Diff Tool — Compares any text format side-by-side with color coding for additions, deletions, and unchanged lines. JSON and XML pre-formatting buttons ensure structural diffs are never confused with whitespace variations.

Timestamp Converter — Converts Unix epoch values across all major timezones, handles both seconds and milliseconds, and generates shareable permalinks. Invaluable when debugging logs, API responses, or JWT tokens.

URL Encoder/Decoder — Correctly distinguishes between encodeURI and encodeURIComponent, includes a query string builder for constructing properly encoded parameters, and handles UTF-8 characters and emoji.

Why Everything Is Free

These tools are free because the developer community runs on shared knowledge and shared tooling. Many of the best tools we use daily — Git, Linux, Node.js, VS Code — began as free, openly available software. We sustain DevTools through non-intrusive display advertising via Google AdSense. This covers our hosting costs and keeps us motivated to add new tools and maintain existing ones.

We will never require a login to use any feature, never add paywalled tiers, and never process your data on our servers. The tools you use today will remain free and privacy-respecting five years from now.

Privacy Commitment

All data processing is client-side JavaScript. When you click "Format JSON," your browser's JavaScript engine runs the formatting logic and returns the result directly to the page. Nothing is sent to formatting.tech servers.

For the most privacy-sensitive work — production API keys, Kubernetes secrets, database credentials, confidential logs — this architecture is non-negotiable. You can verify our practices yourself by opening your browser's Network tab and confirming zero data transfers when using our tools. We don't just claim privacy; we build it into the infrastructure.

Contact & Feedback

We're a small independent project. If you find a bug, have a feature request, or simply want to say the tools saved you time, we'd love to hear from you. Questions and feedback help us prioritize improvements that matter most to the developer community.

For privacy inquiries, security issues, or feedback: privacy@formatting.tech