Remove Empty Lines

You copied a function from a legacy codebase and pasted it into your editor — now there are double blank lines between every block. Or you exported a CSV and every other row is empty because of how the tool formats output. Or you are preparing a markdown document and need to strip all blank separators before parsing. This tool cleans it up in one paste.

Two Modes for Removing Empty Lines

Remove All Empty Lines

Every line that contains only whitespace is deleted. The result contains only lines with at least one non-whitespace character. This is the right mode when you want the most compact output: no blank lines at all.

Example:

Input:
Line one

Line two


Line three

Output:
Line one
Line two
Line three

Use this for data cleaning: log files, exported lists, CSVs, or any block of text where blank lines add no structural meaning.

Collapse Consecutive Empty Lines

Multiple consecutive blank lines are reduced to a single blank line. A single blank line between paragraphs is kept. This preserves intentional spacing while eliminating the excess.

Example:

Input:
First paragraph



Second paragraph

Third paragraph

Output:
First paragraph

Second paragraph

Third paragraph

This is the right mode for documents, README files, or source code where you want to keep the visual separation between sections without the clutter of triple or quadruple blank lines.

Trim Trailing Whitespace

When this option is enabled, spaces and tabs at the end of each line are removed before the empty-line check. This catches lines that look blank but contain invisible whitespace characters — a common artifact of copy-pasting from web pages, PDFs, or certain code editors.

Why it matters:

A line containing only a tab character is not technically empty — it has one character. Without trimming, that line would survive the empty-line removal. With trimming enabled, the trailing whitespace is stripped first, the line becomes genuinely empty, and it is then removed.

This option is especially useful when:

• Working with text copied from a browser or PDF, where invisible spaces are common
• Processing output from tools that pad lines to a fixed width
• Cleaning up files created on Windows where \r\n line endings sometimes leave trailing \r characters after conversion

Line Count Statistics

After processing, the tool shows three numbers:

• Lines Before — the total line count of your input, including all blank lines
• Lines After — the line count after removal or collapsing
• Lines Removed — the difference, showing exactly how much was cleaned up

These counts are useful when verifying that the cleaning operation did what you expected, especially when working with large inputs where visual inspection is impractical.

Common Use Cases

Code Formatting

Many linters and style guides enforce rules about blank lines — Python’s PEP 8 allows at most two consecutive blank lines between top-level functions, and one blank line between methods inside a class. Paste a code block and use “Collapse Consecutive” mode to normalize the spacing before submitting for review or running a formatter.

Log File Cleanup

Log files generated by applications, cron jobs, or CI pipelines often include diagnostic output interspersed with blank lines that separate runs or sections. When analyzing log data programmatically, blank lines can cause parsing errors. Remove all empty lines to produce a clean, parseable stream.

Markdown and Documentation Editing

Markdown documents often accumulate extra blank lines as sections are rewritten and reorganized. Most Markdown renderers treat two or more blank lines identically to one, so the extras add no visual benefit and make the source harder to read. Collapsing consecutive blank lines gives you clean, readable source without changing the rendered output.

CSV and TSV Data Cleaning

Spreadsheet exports frequently include empty rows — from hidden rows being exported, from delimiter issues, or from trailing newlines added by the export tool. Pasting the exported data and removing all empty lines produces a clean row-per-record format ready for import into a database or data processing script.

Email and Message Drafting

Email threads pasted from clients often include excessive blank lines between quoted sections. Collapsing them to single blank lines makes the text easier to read and reduces the visual noise when reviewing long threads.

Config File Normalization

Configuration files for servers, build tools, and applications tend to accumulate blank lines as engineers add, remove, and reorganize settings over time. Removing or collapsing blank lines before committing a config file keeps diffs clean and the file readable.

Privacy

All processing happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never sent to any server. The tool works offline once the page has loaded.

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as an “empty line”?

A line is considered empty if it contains no characters, or (with “Trim Trailing Whitespace” enabled) if it contains only whitespace characters — spaces, tabs, or carriage returns. Lines with at least one non-whitespace character are never removed.

Does this change the order of the remaining lines?

No. The tool only removes or collapses empty lines. All non-empty lines appear in the output in the same order as the input.

What happens if the entire input is empty lines?

With “Remove All Empty Lines” selected, the output will be empty. The stats will show 0 lines after and all input lines removed.

Does it handle Windows CRLF line endings?

Yes. Browsers normalize line endings when you paste text into a textarea, converting \r\n to \n. The tool processes the normalized text correctly. If you are processing files programmatically (not via this tool), ensure your script handles CRLF explicitly.

Is there a line limit?

There is no hard limit. The tool processes text in your browser using JavaScript. Inputs of hundreds of thousands of lines complete in under a second on modern hardware.

Can I use this to remove lines that only have spaces?

Yes — enable the “Trim Trailing Whitespace” option. That strips leading and trailing whitespace from each line before the empty-line check, so a line containing only spaces or tabs will be treated as empty and removed.