Paste your YAML below to view itPaste YAML here

What is the YAML Viewer?

Ever opened a 400-line values.yaml and wondered what half the keys actually do? That's the itch this page scratches. The YAML Viewer takes any YAML file — a Kubernetes Deployment, a Docker Compose stack, a GitHub Actions workflow — and renders it as browsable tables so you can see the shape of the document at a glance instead of scrolling through indentation.

It's built for the reality of modern ops: you paste in a manifest pulled from kubectl get deploy my-app -o yaml, or a slice of docker-compose.yml, or an OpenAPI spec fragment, and you get rows and columns. Arrays under containers: become a table you can scan. Anchors and aliases resolve. Nested maps show up as tables inside their cell, and the Transpose buttons flip rows and columns when a wide table reads better sideways.

Parsing happens locally in the page, and nothing you paste is sent to a server. That matters when the manifest you're looking at has a service account token or a database URL you'd rather not ship to a third party.

How to View YAML

Four steps — paste, browse, drill in, optionally export. Every step uses buttons that are right on this page.

Paste or Upload Your YAML

Drop YAML into the left panel. It can be a whole file or a snippet — say, the spec: block from a Kubernetes Deployment. Hit Sample to load the example below if you just want to see what it looks like.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-app
  namespace: staging-ns
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: my-app
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: my-app
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: api
          image: postgres-13:latest
          ports:
            - containerPort: 8080
          env:
            - name: LOG_LEVEL
              value: info
            - name: DB_HOST
              value: postgres-13.staging-ns.svc.cluster.local

Scan the Top-Level Layout

The main table shows the root keys. For a Kubernetes resource that's apiVersion, kind, metadata, spec. You can see replica counts, namespaces, and labels without scrolling. Parsing follows the YAML 1.2 spec: anchors resolve, dates show exactly as written, and a multi-document stream gets one row per document.

Drill Into Nested Structures

Any cell that holds a nested object or array (a container spec, a volume mount, a step list from a GitHub Actions workflow is drawn as its own table inside the cell, so you can read it without leaving the row. Filter each column to find the one job or env var you care about.

Export or Copy

Need to share a view with a teammate? Hit Excel to download an .xls you can open in Excel or Google Sheets. Or copy values inline for a code review. Nothing leaves your machine unless you explicitly send it.

Who Actually Uses This

SRE Reviewing a Kubernetes Deployment

You're on call, an alert fires, and someone pastes a 600-line Helm-rendered manifest into Slack. Drop it in here and you can see every container, every resource limit, every volume claim as rows you can filter. Beats scrolling the chat thread trying to find resources.limits.memory.

Platform Engineer Auditing Docker Compose

Inheriting a docker-compose.yml from the last person on the team? View the services side by side, filter by image tag, spot the one container still pinned to postgres:9 while the rest are on postgres-13. The table makes version drift obvious.

CI/CD Engineer Browsing GitHub Actions

A workflow file has five jobs, each with a matrix and a dozen steps. Pasting it here flattens the hierarchy into something you can actually read. Filter by runs-on to spot the job still on ubuntu-20.04, or by uses: to audit which third-party actions you depend on.

API Developer Exploring an OpenAPI Spec

You're reviewing someone else's OpenAPI 3.1 document and want to see which endpoints take a requestBody with a specific schema. Paste the YAML, expand paths, filter for the verb you care about. Way faster than Ctrl+F on raw text.

FAQs About Viewing YAML

Does the viewer support multi-document YAML?

Yes. Streams separated by --- (the kind kubectl emits for a bundle of resources) parse fine — you'll see each document as its own row in the table. Anchors and aliases resolve too, which matters for Helm output.

Will it handle a huge Helm template output?

Up to a point. A 5–10 MB rendered chart works, though browsing gets sluggish past ~2000 rows. For really massive bundles, paste one resource at a time — it keeps the table snappy.

Can I browse comments in my YAML?

Comments get stripped during parsing — that's how YAML libraries work. If you're reviewing a config and the comments matter, keep the raw file open in a second tab. The viewer is for structure, not annotations.

Does it show me schema validation errors?

No, it only shows syntax errors from the parser itself. For Kubernetes-specific validation, use kubectl apply --dry-run=server. For OpenAPI, use the Swagger Editor. This tool is for exploring shape, not enforcing schemas.

What happens to secrets I paste?

They stay on your machine. The parser runs in the browser, so a base64-encoded Kubernetes Secret (or a kubeconfig with tokens) never leaves the page. If you're still paranoid, disconnect your wifi first — the tool still works offline.

Can I share a link to a specific view?

Not right now — the URL doesn't carry state. Use the Excel download if you need to share what you're seeing, or screenshot a filtered table. We're deliberately not persisting pasted YAML anywhere.

Other YAML Tools

The viewer is great for browsing, but when you need to format, convert, or validate, grab one of these:

YAML Viewer - Browse and Explore YAML Files Online