To remove blank lines from text, use Remove Empty Lines to exclude complete rows that match the selected blank-line rule while preserving the content and order of every retained line.
A row can be truly empty or look empty while containing spaces, tabs, non-breaking spaces, or other invisible characters. Those cases require different rules: a strict cleanup removes only zero-length lines, while a visual cleanup can also remove rows made entirely of whitespace.
The tool operates on pasted plain text in your browser. It can clean prose, lists, exported values, configuration blocks, logs, code snippets, and Markdown drafts without uploading the text to an external service.
Choose the rule that matches the gap
The whitespace-only control changes what the tool means by “blank.” It is enabled by default because editors and spreadsheets often leave indentation behind in rows that appear empty on the screen.
| Selected rule | Rows removed | Best fit | Important detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whitespace-only enabled | Zero-length lines and lines made entirely of recognized whitespace | Cleaning visually unwanted vertical gaps | Spaces, tabs, non-breaking spaces, and other recognized Unicode whitespace qualify |
| Strict empty-only | Only lines with zero code units | Preserving a meaningful distinction between empty and indentation-only rows | A line containing even one space, tab, or other whitespace character is retained exactly |
The whitespace-only test follows the browser’s Unicode-aware JavaScript string-trimming behavior. It covers spaces, tabs, non-breaking spaces, and other whitespace recognized by the browser, but it does not rewrite the lines that remain.
The selected rule affects only which complete lines pass the blank-line test. Every line in a consecutive blank run is processed individually rather than counted as one separator. The setting does not trim, reformat, or normalize the content of retained lines.
Remove blank lines from pasted text
- Paste the text. Add the prose, list, configuration, code, or exported values that contain the unwanted blank rows. The input must contain text rather than be completely empty.
- Choose the blank-line rule. Keep the whitespace-only option enabled when visually blank rows should be removed. Disable it when only zero-length lines should be removed and whitespace-only rows need to remain visible.
- Process the text. Filtering, counting, and output generation happen locally in the browser. Nothing is uploaded, stored, or sent to an external API.
- Verify the summary. Check the reported numbers of removed and retained lines. Leading blank lines and consecutive blank runs contribute individually to the removal count, so the totals should match the structure of the input.
- Inspect and use the result. Compare the generated output with the original before replacing a source file. If you change the input or switch the whitespace-only option, the previous output and counts clear, and you should process the text again.
This workflow suits Markdown drafts, pasted tables, email lists, configuration blocks, logs, subtitle fragments, and code snippets when the vertical gaps are accidental. It removes rows rather than joining the remaining lines, so prose wrapping and the line structure of the retained content stay intact.
Keep the content of retained lines intact
Retained lines are never trimmed. Leading indentation, trailing spaces, tabs, repeated internal spaces, punctuation, letter case, and Unicode characters remain unchanged. This makes the cleanup suitable when spaces carry a purpose inside a line, such as alignment in plain-text output or indentation in a code sample.
The tool does not collapse horizontal whitespace, wrap prose, remove repeated content, sort records, or normalize Unicode. Its only content decision is whether each complete line satisfies the selected blank-line predicate. Any other differences between the input and output come from line removal or output boundary formatting, not from rewriting retained lines.
Line order is also preserved. The output does not reorder records, combine neighboring lines, or introduce extra separators. If you need to join lines instead of remove blank ones, that is a different operation and should be handled with a line-break remover rather than this tool.
Check counts before replacing the original
The removed and retained counts provide a quick audit of the cleanup. Review them alongside the output rather than assuming every gap had the same cause. For example, a long series of empty rows may be intentional section spacing, while an isolated indentation-only row may have been introduced by a copy-and-paste operation.
Compare the result before overwriting a source file, especially when working with programming languages or formats where blank lines aid readability. Removing true empty lines can still create a substantial diff even when a language does not require those lines for execution. Strict mode preserves whitespace-only rows, but it does not preserve genuinely empty lines.
Keep the original available until the cleaned version has been checked in its final destination. This is particularly useful when the text will be imported, published, or sent to another system that may interpret blank lines differently from the editor where it was pasted.
Understand line endings and input limits
The input splitter recognizes CRLF, standalone CR, and LF line endings. A CRLF pair counts as one boundary, while a standalone CR is also treated as a line boundary. Mixed source endings are therefore recognized rather than appearing as stray characters inside a retained line.
Generated output joins retained lines with LF, so mixed source line endings become one consistent boundary style in the result. This normalization is separate from the preserved character content of retained lines. A line ending at the end of the input creates a final empty line, and that final empty line is removed under either blank-line mode.
The input limit is 1,000,000 UTF-16 code units. Text at the exact limit is accepted, while one additional code unit produces a visible error and no partial output. The tool never samples, slices, or silently truncates a large input. Completely empty input is rejected because an absence of text cannot be treated as one removable line. A whitespace-only input is valid: with whitespace-only removal enabled it produces an empty result and one removed line, while strict mode retains it.
Use a format-aware editor for structured formats
The tool sees a browser string and documented line boundaries only. It does not parse CSV records containing embedded newlines, quoted JSON strings, rich text, Word documents, or PDF layout. A format-aware editor is safer when the blank line is part of a quoted field, a document paragraph, a table cell, or another structure that cannot be understood from line boundaries alone.
For CSV or JSON containing embedded line breaks, a blank-looking line inside a quoted value is still just a line to this tool. It cannot use quotation context to protect that line. Convert the content to a supported plain-text structure first, or edit it in an application that understands the format.
Plain-text code and configuration are supported, but deliberate blank lines may still be removed. Use the generated output as a reviewable derivative rather than an automatic replacement, and choose strict empty-only mode when indentation-only records need to remain distinguishable.
Related reading: How Do I Check the Result After I Remove Punctuation?.