Spaces to Tabs
Convert space indentation to tabs — replaces every 4 spaces with a tab character instantly. Free, client-side indentation converter for code.
🔒 100% Client-Side Processing
Your data is processed entirely in your browser and never transmitted to any server.
0 / 100M Limit
Common Use Cases
Meeting tab-required formats
Makefiles require real tab indentation — convert space-indented recipes so make stops throwing missing-separator errors.
Matching team style
Convert space-indented code to tabs before contributing to a repo whose style guide mandates tab indentation.
Shrinking indentation size
Replace 4-space runs with single tab characters to compact deeply nested files.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How many spaces convert to one tab?
- Every run of exactly 4 spaces becomes one tab character — the most common indentation width. Code indented with 2-space levels will convert every two levels into one tab.
- Why convert indentation to tabs at all?
- Tabs let each developer choose their own display width, produce smaller files, and are required by some formats like Makefiles, where recipe lines must start with a real tab character.
- What if my file uses two-space indentation?
- It will be left alone. Only runs of exactly four spaces collapse to a tab, so two-space indentation passes through unchanged and six spaces become a tab followed by two spaces. Normalise the file to four-space indentation first if you need a clean conversion.
- Will it touch spaces inside my code?
- Any run of four spaces is converted, wherever it sits — including inside string literals, comments, and aligned trailing comments. Column alignment built from spaces is the usual casualty, since it very often contains runs of four.
- Why would I want tabs rather than spaces?
- Accessibility is the strongest argument: a tab is one character whose displayed width each reader controls, so a developer who needs eight-column indentation can have it without changing the file. Spaces hard-code one person's preference for everyone. The Tabs to Spaces tool converts the other way.
- Is my data private when I use this tool?
- Yes. This tool runs entirely in your browser using client-side JavaScript — nothing you type is transmitted to, logged by, or stored on any server. You can safely process confidential text, tokens, or code.