Use the indent= parameter of json.dump() or json.dumps() to specify how many spaces to indent by:

>>> import json
>>> your_json = '["foo", {"bar": ["baz", null, 1.0, 2]}]'
>>> parsed = json.loads(your_json)
>>> print(json.dumps(parsed, indent=4))
[
    "foo",
    {
        "bar": [
            "baz",
            null,
            1.0,
            2
        ]
    }
]

To parse a file, use json.load():

with open('filename.txt', 'r') as handle:
    parsed = json.load(handle)
Answer from Blender on Stack Overflow
Top answer
1 of 15
3096

Use the indent= parameter of json.dump() or json.dumps() to specify how many spaces to indent by:

>>> import json
>>> your_json = '["foo", {"bar": ["baz", null, 1.0, 2]}]'
>>> parsed = json.loads(your_json)
>>> print(json.dumps(parsed, indent=4))
[
    "foo",
    {
        "bar": [
            "baz",
            null,
            1.0,
            2
        ]
    }
]

To parse a file, use json.load():

with open('filename.txt', 'r') as handle:
    parsed = json.load(handle)
2 of 15
500

You can do this on the command line:

python3 -m json.tool some.json

(as already mentioned in the commentaries to the question, thanks to @Kai Petzke for the python3 suggestion).

Actually python is not my favourite tool as far as json processing on the command line is concerned. For simple pretty printing is ok, but if you want to manipulate the json it can become overcomplicated. You'd soon need to write a separate script-file, you could end up with maps whose keys are u"some-key" (python unicode), which makes selecting fields more difficult and doesn't really go in the direction of pretty-printing.

You can also use jq:

jq . some.json

and you get colors as a bonus (and way easier extendability).

Addendum: There is some confusion in the comments about using jq to process large JSON files on the one hand, and having a very large jq program on the other. For pretty-printing a file consisting of a single large JSON entity, the practical limitation is RAM. For pretty-printing a 2GB file consisting of a single array of real-world data, the "maximum resident set size" required for pretty-printing was 5GB (whether using jq 1.5 or 1.6). Note also that jq can be used from within python after pip install jq.

🌐
Vertabelo Academy
academy.vertabelo.com › course › python-json › writing-json-files › writing-to-json-file › jsondumps-options-the-indent
How to Read and Write JSON Files in Python | Learn Python | Vertabelo Academy
A positive integer indent indent ... An indent level of 0 or negative will only insert newlines. None (the default) selects the most compact representation. Let's have a look at the result.
Discussions

JSON dumps indent tab
use simplejson instead More on reddit.com
🌐 r/learnpython
2
3
October 12, 2016
python - Dumping a JSON using tab indents (not spaces) - Stack Overflow
I wanted to know if there was a way to specify indent of 1 tab instead of 4 spaces. I wasn't able to look this up in the docs anywhere. ... I think you can't do that, but you can replace 4 spaces in the resulting string with tab in a separate call ... You could use simplejson here, it has some nice features on top of what json module provides. Another option is to copy the changes and create a custom class. ... import re dump ... More on stackoverflow.com
🌐 stackoverflow.com
python - Dumps Not Write To JSON file Pretty Print I Already using "indent=4" I added JSON View - Stack Overflow
To get pretty printing using json.dumps() you need to include a parameter like indent=4. More on stackoverflow.com
🌐 stackoverflow.com
python - How to custom indent json dump? - Stack Overflow
I use indent = 2, but I want the first level of indentation to be zero. For example: ... I'm really curious what's your use-case for this. ... @yedpodtrzitko I am modifying JSONs for game modding purposes, it works but it would be better if it matches the native game JSON format More on stackoverflow.com
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Python
docs.python.org › 3 › library › json.html
JSON encoder and decoder — Python 3.14.3 documentation
3 weeks ago - Disable escaping of non-ascii characters, see json.dumps() for more information. Added in version 3.9. --json-lines¶ · Parse every input line as separate JSON object. Added in version 3.8. --indent, --tab, --no-indent, --compact¶ · Mutually exclusive options for whitespace control.
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GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.org › python › json-dumps-in-python
json.dumps() in Python - GeeksforGeeks
Example 2: This example formats JSON output to make it more readable using indentation. ... The JSON string becomes easy to read. Example 3: This example sorts dictionary keys alphabetically before converting them to JSON. ... Useful for consistent JSON output. Example 4: This example shows how json.dumps() converts a Python list into a JSON-formatted string, which is commonly used when sending list data through APIs.
Published   January 13, 2026
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/learnpython › json dumps indent tab
r/learnpython on Reddit: JSON dumps indent tab
October 12, 2016 -

We use Python 2.7 and I want to change the indention of JSON.dumps() to TABS instead of SPACES. When you do indent=8, it will insert 8 spaces, but I want to insert 2 tabs. I have read that this is possible in Python 3.3 by doing indent="\t\t" but we use Python 2.7.

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DigitalOcean
digitalocean.com › community › tutorials › python-pretty-print-json
How to Pretty Print JSON in Python | DigitalOcean
September 16, 2025 - The best and easiest way to indent JSON output in Python is by using the the indent parameter in the json.dumps() function.
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Medium
medium.com › @blogshub4 › how-to-pretty-print-a-json-string-in-python-98a85f99ecb4
How to Pretty Print a JSON String in Python | by Blogshub | Medium
December 22, 2024 - # Minified JSON string json_data = '{"name": "Dharmender", "age": 25, "city": "Bangalore"}'# Convert to Python object parsed_data = json.loads(json_data)# Pretty print with indentation pretty_json = json.dumps(parsed_data, indent=4) print(pretty_json)
Find elsewhere
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ReqBin
reqbin.com › code › python › 0l6wsqxp › python-pretty-print-json-example
How do I pretty print JSON in Python?
To pretty print a JSON string in Python, you can use the json.dumps(indent) method of the built-in package named json. First, you need to use the json.loads() method to convert the JSON string into a Python object.
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PYnative
pynative.com › home › python › json › python prettyprint json data
Python PrettyPrint JSON Data
May 14, 2021 - The indent parameter specifies the spaces that are used at the beginning of a line. We can use the indent parameter of json.dump() to specify the indentation value. By default, when you write JSON data into a file, Python doesn’t use indentations ...
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PythonHow
pythonhow.com › how › prettyprint-a-json-file
Here is how to prettyprint a JSON file in Python
To pretty print a JSON file in Python, you can use the json module along with the json.dumps() function. The json.dumps() function allows you to serialize a JSON object to a formatted string with indentation and line breaks.
Top answer
1 of 16
32

(Note: The code in this answer only works with json.dumps() which returns a JSON formatted string, but not with json.dump() which writes directly to file-like objects. There's a modified version of it that works with both in my answer to the question Write two-dimensional list to JSON file.)

Updated

Below is a version of my original answer that has been revised several times. Unlike the original, which I posted only to show how to get the first idea in J.F.Sebastian's answer to work, and which like his, returned a non-indented string representation of the object. The latest updated version returns the Python object JSON formatted in isolation.

The keys of each coordinate dict will appear in sorted order, as per one of the OP's comments, but only if a sort_keys=True keyword argument is specified in the initial json.dumps() call driving the process, and it no longer changes the object's type to a string along the way. In other words, the actual type of the "wrapped" object is now maintained.

I think not understanding the original intent of my post resulted in number of folks downvoting it—so, primarily for that reason, I have "fixed" and improved my answer several times. The current version is a hybrid of my original answer coupled with some of the ideas @Erik Allik used in his answer, plus useful feedback from other users shown in the comments below this answer.

The following code appears to work unchanged in both Python 2.7.16 and 3.7.4.

from _ctypes import PyObj_FromPtr
import json
import re

class NoIndent(object):
    """ Value wrapper. """
    def __init__(self, value):
        self.value = value


class MyEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
    FORMAT_SPEC = '@@{}@@'
    regex = re.compile(FORMAT_SPEC.format(r'(\d+)'))

    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        # Save copy of any keyword argument values needed for use here.
        self.__sort_keys = kwargs.get('sort_keys', None)
        super(MyEncoder, self).__init__(**kwargs)

    def default(self, obj):
        return (self.FORMAT_SPEC.format(id(obj)) if isinstance(obj, NoIndent)
                else super(MyEncoder, self).default(obj))

    def encode(self, obj):
        format_spec = self.FORMAT_SPEC  # Local var to expedite access.
        json_repr = super(MyEncoder, self).encode(obj)  # Default JSON.

        # Replace any marked-up object ids in the JSON repr with the
        # value returned from the json.dumps() of the corresponding
        # wrapped Python object.
        for match in self.regex.finditer(json_repr):
            # see https://stackoverflow.com/a/15012814/355230
            id = int(match.group(1))
            no_indent = PyObj_FromPtr(id)
            json_obj_repr = json.dumps(no_indent.value, sort_keys=self.__sort_keys)

            # Replace the matched id string with json formatted representation
            # of the corresponding Python object.
            json_repr = json_repr.replace(
                            '"{}"'.format(format_spec.format(id)), json_obj_repr)

        return json_repr


if __name__ == '__main__':
    from string import ascii_lowercase as letters

    data_structure = {
        'layer1': {
            'layer2': {
                'layer3_1': NoIndent([{"x":1,"y":7}, {"x":0,"y":4}, {"x":5,"y":3},
                                      {"x":6,"y":9},
                                      {k: v for v, k in enumerate(letters)}]),
                'layer3_2': 'string',
                'layer3_3': NoIndent([{"x":2,"y":8,"z":3}, {"x":1,"y":5,"z":4},
                                      {"x":6,"y":9,"z":8}]),
                'layer3_4': NoIndent(list(range(20))),
            }
        }
    }

    print(json.dumps(data_structure, cls=MyEncoder, sort_keys=True, indent=2))

Output:

{
  "layer1": {
    "layer2": {
      "layer3_1": [{"x": 1, "y": 7}, {"x": 0, "y": 4}, {"x": 5, "y": 3}, {"x": 6, "y": 9}, {"a": 0, "b": 1, "c": 2, "d": 3, "e": 4, "f": 5, "g": 6, "h": 7, "i": 8, "j": 9, "k": 10, "l": 11, "m": 12, "n": 13, "o": 14, "p": 15, "q": 16, "r": 17, "s": 18, "t": 19, "u": 20, "v": 21, "w": 22, "x": 23, "y": 24, "z": 25}],
      "layer3_2": "string",
      "layer3_3": [{"x": 2, "y": 8, "z": 3}, {"x": 1, "y": 5, "z": 4}, {"x": 6, "y": 9, "z": 8}],
      "layer3_4": [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19]
    }
  }
}
2 of 16
18

A bodge, but once you have the string from dumps(), you can perform a regular expression substitution on it, if you're sure of the format of its contents. Something along the lines of:

s = json.dumps(data_structure, indent=2)
s = re.sub('\s*{\s*"(.)": (\d+),\s*"(.)": (\d+)\s*}(,?)\s*', r'{"\1":\2,"\3":\4}\5', s)
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Sentry
sentry.io › sentry answers › python › write json data to a file in python
Write JSON data to a file in Python | Sentry
Specifically, the json.dump function ... "John", "lastname": "Doe", "age": 35} with open("data.json", "w") as f: json.dump(data, f, indent=4)...
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Jsontotable
jsontotable.org › blog › python › python-pretty-print-json
Python Pretty Print JSON - Format JSON with Indentation (2025) | JSON to Table Converter
January 16, 2025 - Pretty printing JSON in Python is essential for debugging, logging, and creating readable configuration files. The indent parameter makes it simple. •Use json.dumps(data, indent=2) for basic pretty printing
🌐
Reddit
reddit.com › r/learnpython › formatting json output in python
r/learnpython on Reddit: formatting json output in Python
May 12, 2022 -

Hi,

I would like to read json into Python code, and then output processed json. In order to get started with this, I have written very basic Python, and am attempting to read in very basic json I found online.

The input json is:

{
    "firstName": "John",
    "lastName": "Doe",
    "hobbies": ["biking", "coding", "rapping"],
    "age": 35,
    "children": [
        {
            "firstName": "hector",
            "age": 6
        },
        {
            "firstName": "cassandra",
            "age": 8
        }
    ]
}

The code is:

import json

if __name__ == '__main__':
    
    print( "start" )

    # read and load input json
    json_input_filename = "input.json"
    json_input = open( json_input_filename )

    json_input_dict = json.load( json_input )

    # write output json
    json_output_filename = "output.json"
    with open( json_output_filename, 'w' ) as json_output:
        json.dump( json_string, json_output )
  

    print( f"end" )

and the output is:

"{\"firstName\": \"John\", \"lastName\": \"Doe\", \"hobbies\": [\"biking\", \"coding\", \"rapping\"], \"age\": 35, \"children\": [{\"firstName\": \"hector\", \"age\": 6}, {\"firstName\": \"cassandra\", \"age\": 8}]}"

What can I do in order to preserve something resembling the original formatting? I'm going to load this output into some other code in order to process it further.

Thank you very much

🌐
GitHub
gist.github.com › jannismain › e96666ca4f059c3e5bc28abb711b5c92
A JSON Encoder in Python, that puts small lists on single lines. · GitHub
I have reworked it so indent can be provided both as int and str. Providing indent="\t" works as expected now. ... Not only newlines need to be escaped, I think return json.dumps(o) is better.