About Tab ↔ Space Converter

Switch tabs to N spaces or N spaces back to tabs. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Text / String collection.

Use Cases

• Teams enforcing consistent indentation across mixed-editor workflows
• Open source contributors matching a project's .editorconfig settings
• Code reviewers normalizing indentation before comparing file diffs
• Instructors standardizing student code submissions for grading tools

Tips

• Set the exact number of spaces per tab to match your project's style guide
• Convert spaces back to tabs for codebases that prefer tab indentation
• Paste code from different sources and unify indentation in one click

Fun Facts

• The tabs vs. spaces debate dates back to the 1970s — a 2017 Stack Overflow analysis of 400,000 developers found that spaces users earned 8.6% more than tab users.
• Python's PEP 8 style guide mandates 4 spaces per indentation level, while Go's gofmt tool enforces tabs — making the debate language-dependent.
• The ASCII tab character (0x09) was originally designed for typewriters in the 1960s to align columns in tabular data, hence the name 'tabulator key'.

FAQ

Why do projects prefer tabs or spaces?

Tabs are smaller, customizable per user, and better for accessibility (reader can set their own width). Spaces render identically everywhere, no config needed. Both are valid — consistency within a project matters.

What's the common tab width?

Python convention: 4 spaces. Go convention: tabs displayed as 8. JavaScript/CSS convention: 2 or 4 spaces. Match your project's .editorconfig.

Does it convert only leading whitespace or all tabs?

Toggle — default converts only leading indentation (preserves tabs in the middle of lines, used for alignment in tables). Aggressive mode converts every tab.

Will it fix mixed indentation?

Yes — a file with mixed tabs-and-spaces becomes consistent in a single pass. Pick your target (all tabs or all spaces of N) and the tool normalizes.