CodeNeat

One Extension. Every Language. Your Style.

CodeNeat is a multi-language code formatter for Visual Studio Code. It formats 41 languages and file formats through their official formatting engines, and replaces hand-edited configuration files with a visual settings dashboard and a live before/after preview.

New here? Read the introduction on Medium: Stop Spending AI Tokens on Indentation: Meet CodeNeat.

Highlights

• 32 languages ready on install. HTML, CSS, SCSS, Less, JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, TSX, JSON, YAML, Markdown, MDX, Vue, Angular templates, GraphQL, XML, Java, Python, C, C++, C#, PHP, Go, Dart, Bash, Lua, SQL, TOML, Dockerfile, Protocol Buffers and LaTeX format out of the box. The engines (Prettier, Ruff, gofmt, clang-format, StyLua, shfmt, dart format and others) are built in. No other extension is required.
• Guided setup for the rest. Rust, Ruby, Kotlin, Scala, Swift, F#, PowerShell, R and Terraform use the formatter that belongs to their toolchain. When one is missing, CodeNeat offers to install it: you see the exact command, confirm, and it runs in a terminal.
• Your style, without JSON. Set line length, indentation, quotes, semicolons, braces and more from a searchable dashboard. Apply a preference to every language or to one, for yourself or for the whole workspace.
• See it before you save it. The live preview runs the real formatter on sample code or on your current file and highlights every changed line.
• Respects your project. .editorconfig, .prettierrc, .clang-format, rustfmt.toml and similar files take priority by default and are never modified.
• Private. No account, no telemetry, no network requests. Your code stays on your computer.

Getting started

1. Open a supported file.
2. Click the CodeNeat button at the top right of the editor. The formatted code appears with every change highlighted in green; choose Keep Changes or Undo Changes.
3. To choose your style, click the CodeNeat icon in the Activity Bar (or run CodeNeat: Open Settings), change a preference, watch the live preview, and press Apply.
4. To format on every save, open Auto Formatting, make CodeNeat the default formatter, and switch on Format on Save.

Ways to format

Every button, menu entry and automatic behaviour can be switched off: see Settings → Advanced → Buttons, menus and on/off, or the user guide. The master switch codeneat.enabled turns CodeNeat off entirely, for everything or for a single workspace.

What you can do

Customize each language

Any preference can apply to all languages or to one. Pick the language at the top of the dashboard, set Applies to to that language, change the option and press Apply. The Language-Specific Options page adds the extras that only one language has:

• XML: choose whether whitespace is meaningful. Switch to Not meaningful for normal nested indentation.
• Java: switch the formatter to clang-format (bundled) for control over braces, spacing and blank lines.
• C, C++, C#: start from the LLVM, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, WebKit, Chromium or GNU style.
• Python: quote style, indentation size and list layout.
• SQL: dialect and keyword case.
• Markdown, HTML, Vue, Bash, TOML, Lua: their own wrapping, nesting, alignment and layout options.

See Customize one language in the user guide for the full table.

How CodeNeat formats

CodeNeat delegates all formatting to established, language-aware engines. This keeps results correct and consistent with the wider ecosystem, and it shapes how the settings behave:

• Options reflect each engine. A preference is offered for a language only when its formatter implements it. Controls that do not apply are disabled with an explanation, and the dashboard points to an alternative formatter when one offers more options.
• Line length is a target width. Formatters wrap code where it is safe to do so and never split strings, URLs or other indivisible tokens to meet a number.
• Some engines define a single style. Tools such as gofmt, terraform fmt and buf format are intentionally not configurable, and CodeNeat presents them that way.
• Formatting never changes behaviour. Operations that modify code rather than layout, such as removing unused imports, are separate options that are off by default and clearly labelled.
• Installed tools take precedence. When a formatter such as Ruff or clang-format is installed on your system, CodeNeat uses it in place of the built-in build, so that the tool's own project configuration file is honoured.

Per-language formatter details are listed in the language matrix.

Limits

A file over the size or time limit is left exactly as it is, and CodeNeat tells you why. Both limits are on the Advanced page.

Commands

Format Document and Format Selection are also in the editor's context menu, and Format Workspace is in the Explorer context menu of folders.

Documentation

• Introduction on Medium: why CodeNeat exists and a tour with screenshots
• User guide: every feature, how to use it and how to switch it off
• Supported languages
• Formatter installation guide
• Configuration reference and options reference
• Troubleshooting
• Privacy and security
• Architecture and contributing

Install from a VSIX

code --install-extension codeneat.vsix

Or in VS Code: Extensions view → … menu → Install from VSIX…. Requires VS Code 1.90 or newer.

Licence

CodeNeat is free and open source, released under the Apache License 2.0. Every component it includes is open source under a permissive licence; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for the full list. The bundled formatting engines keep their own licences: Prettier and its XML, PHP, LaTeX and TOML plugins (MIT), prettier-plugin-java (Apache-2.0), sql-formatter (MIT), the @wasm-fmt builds of gofmt, Ruff, clang-format, StyLua, shfmt and dart format (MIT packaging; the engines keep their upstream licences: BSD-3-Clause, MIT, Apache-2.0 with LLVM exception, MPL-2.0, BSD-3-Clause and BSD-3-Clause) and dockerfmt (MIT).