Tabs to spaces

[masakk1]

What type of request is this?

New tool idea

Clear and concise description of the feature you are proposing

I often need to convert tabs to spaces, and I'd like to avoid searching online for them. VSCode's current implementation only converts indentation (the firsts tabs) not variable tabs. Replacing \t for spaces messes up with variable width.

Would really like this! Specially having a configurable number of spaces. (2-4-8)
It's crazy to think almost every website does this wrong! Or don't have enough spaces. Or only leading tabs.

Is their example of this tool in the wild?

Working examples:
Notepad++ does this well: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/455037/convert-tabs-to-spaces-in-notepad
takumii.tabspace vscode extension does it really well, too

Wrong examples:
This one is just a replace tool. That's wrong! https://pinetools.com/convert-tabs-spaces
Same problem: https://tabstospaces.com/
same problem: https://onlinestringtools.com/convert-tabs-to-spaces
VSCode replaces only the leading tabs, first tabs. Not the rest.
not converting all tabs, too: https://tidy.js.org/tabs-to-spaces/#/result
same, only leading: https://text.uticraft.com/online/text/convert-tabs-to-spaces

Additional context

I literally cannot find any website that does this, only notepad++ and that vscode extension.
This would be really useful, since I constantly have to do this with my SQL queries, where I use mostly tabs but have to convert to spaces for deployment.

Thanks!

Validations

• Check the feature is not already implemented in the project.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that request the same feature to avoid creating a duplicate.
• Check that the feature can be implemented in a client side only app (IT-Tools is client side only, no server).

[masakk1]

Note: This might be an isolated use case, where I want to convert ALL tabs to spaces. If other people have other needs, it might be interesting to add it as an option in a dropdown or something.

[willjayyyy]

Hi! 👋 @masakk1

Great request — this has now been implemented in next-tools.

I’ve added a Tabs ↔ Spaces converter.
This tool converts tabs and spaces based on tab stop semantics (supports bidirectional conversion), and preserves visual alignment in monospaced fonts.

You can try it here:
👉 https://www.next-tools.dev/tabs-to-spaces

More generally, next-tools is a maintained fork of it-tools.
Since the original project has become largely inactive, I started this fork to continue maintenance and improvements:

• Fully rebuilt UI using shadcn/ui
• Proper i18n support, including translations inside individual tools
• Multiple long‑standing issues fixed
• New tools added based on community requests

Repository:
👉 https://github.com/willjayyyy/next-tools

[sharevb]

Hi @masakk1, also here: https://sharevb-it-tools.vercel.app/tab-to-spaces

And if you are interested in an up to date version of it-tools, with many improvements, new tools, and bug fixes, as this repo is almost no more maintained, I made a fork here : https://github.com/sharevb/it-tools (https://sharevb-it-tools.vercel.app/ and docker images https://github.com/sharevb/it-tools/pkgs/container/it-tools)