Right after the Apple event ended, I was sitting in front of my computer watching the livestream. Half of my friends were shouting "buy, buy, buy" in their social feeds, while the other half—the developers—had already quietly opened their JSON formatting tools. You might think it's strange, what does an Apple event have to do with JSON formatting? A lot, actually.
Every time Apple releases a new system or new hardware, developers have to dig into the documentation right away. Apple's API responses are all in JSON format, packed densely into a tangled mess. Unformatted JSON is like stuffing a dictionary into a shipping box and shaking it up—you can't find the field you're looking for at all. That's when JSON formatting tools become a lifesaver.
I know a guy who does iOS development. Within three minutes of the event ending, he had already copied the new API response examples from Apple's developer documentation and thrown them into a JSON formatting tool. What was originally a dark blob of characters instantly became neatly indented, clearly hierarchical structure. Which field is new, which parameter got renamed—you can spot it all at a glance. He calls this "grabbing first release"—whoever figures out the new API's quirks first can push out an adapted version by the next morning. When users update their system and open the app without it crashing, the ratings stay solid.
Simply put, JSON formatting turns machine-readable code into something humans can read. You don't need to remember which bracket matches which bracket—the tool draws the nesting relationships into a tree diagram for you. When debugging APIs, before formatting you have to count commas like a detective; after formatting you just read key-value pairs directly. The efficiency difference is several times over.
Many online JSON formatting tools now also come with validation features. After Apple events, there are often posts on developer forums asking "why does my request return 400," and the JSON they paste is missing a quote or has an extra trailing comma that you can't spot with the naked eye. Throw it into a formatting tool, and the red error markers point directly at the line number. Fix it, copy it back, problem solved.
Another scenario is coordinating with the backend. When Apple's new system supports some new feature, the frontend wants to use it, but the backend says the API isn't ready yet. At that point, the frontend can hand-craft a JSON data sample, organize it clearly with a formatting tool, and send it to the backend saying "just return it in this structure." The backend takes one look—clear hierarchy, explicit field types—and saves so much back-and-forth time.
So don't underestimate this tool. It's not flashy, unlike those AI coding assistants that can write code for you, but it's like a screwdriver—unremarkable in daily life, but you really can't do without it when it matters. Apple events happen several times a year, and each one is a sleepless night for developers. The JSON formatting tool sits quietly in the browser bookmarks bar. Click once, and the tangled mess becomes straight lines, and the work that needs to get done can get done.
If you haven't used it yet, next time you get a garbled API response, don't rush to curse the backend—throw it into a JSON formatter first and take a look. Maybe the problem is hiding in some misaligned bracket.