YAML Minifier

Reduced 31 to 14 characters of YAML.

How it works

• Removed comments outside quoted scalars.
• Removed blank lines and trailing whitespace.
• Compressed indentation to a 2-space step.
• Preserved quoted scalars and block-scalar bodies.

• Indentation levels are preserved, so the document's structure is unchanged.
• A `#` inside a quoted scalar or a block scalar is preserved verbatim.
• Output is 14 character(s); minifying it again changes nothing.

Methodology

1. Split the document into lines and, outside block scalars, strip comments that start at whitespace and trailing whitespace.
2. Drop blank lines and compress indentation to a 2-space step while preserving the level of every line.
3. Copy block-scalar bodies and quoted scalars byte-for-byte.

Usage

1. Paste or type a YAML document.
2. Choose whether to remove comments.
3. Run the minifier and copy the compact result.

Examples

These are examples, not current values: they use fixed inputs, while the interactive tool computes live results in your browser.

Comments and blanks removed

{
  "text": "# top\na: 1\n\nb:\n  c: 2  # inline",
  "removeComments": true
}

Block scalar preserved

{
  "text": "s: |\n  keep   # this\n  line",
  "removeComments": true
}

Wide indentation compressed

{
  "text": "a:\n    b:\n        c: 1",
  "removeComments": false
}

Limitations

What can be removed from YAML

Comments and blank lines carry no data, so they are always safe to remove. Indentation cannot be removed — only compressed — because it encodes the structure.

The minifier keeps every structural level, so the parsed document is identical to the input's.