How to Open a JSON File
A .json file is plain text — no special software is required to open it. The question is really how you want to read it: glance at the contents, explore the structure, edit values, or get the data into a spreadsheet. Each goal has a best tool, and all of them are free.
Fastest: drag it into a browser
Every modern browser opens JSON files. Drag the file into a Chrome, Firefox or Edge window (or press Ctrl/Cmd+O and select it). Firefox even renders an interactive collapsible view by default; Chrome shows the raw text. For a one-time “what’s in this file?” check, this beats installing anything.
Most readable: an online viewer
Raw JSON — especially minified JSON on a single line — is hard to read as text. Paste the contents into the JSON Viewer to explore it as a collapsible tree with color-coded types, or into the JSON Formatter to get cleanly indented text you can copy back out. Both run entirely in your browser, so the file’s contents are never uploaded anywhere — safe even for exports containing personal data.
For editing: a code editor
To change the file, use a text editor — ideally a code editor. VS Code (free, Windows/Mac/Linux) is the standard choice: it colors the syntax, flags errors as you type and formats on save. Built-in editors work too: Notepad on Windows and TextEdit on Mac open JSON fine — just beware TextEdit’s rich-text mode (turn on plain text via Format → Make Plain Text) and never edit JSON in Word or Google Docs, which silently replace straight quotes with typographic ones and break the file.
Into a spreadsheet: convert to CSV
Excel and Google Sheets don’t open JSON directly in a useful way (Excel’s Power Query can, but it is buried). The simple path: if the file contains an array of records, run it through the JSON to CSV converter, download the CSV, and open that — one row per record, one column per field, ready for sorting and pivot tables.
On a phone or tablet
The browser route works everywhere: open this site’s viewer or formatter on the device, then open the JSON file in any app that shows text (Files, a mail attachment preview), copy the contents and paste. No app install needed.
Editing without breaking the file
JSON’s syntax is strict: one stray comma and programs will refuse the file. Three habits prevent most damage. First, keep quotes straight (") — a giveaway that a document editor mangled the file is curly quotes. Second, when you delete the last item in a list, delete the comma before it too. Third, after any edit, paste the file into the JSON Validator before saving — it pinpoints the exact line of any mistake, and the common JSON errors guide shows the fix for each message you might see.
What's actually in a JSON file?
Structured data: settings for an app, a data export, an API response someone saved. It reads as nested labels and values — text in quotes, numbers, lists in square brackets, groups in curly braces. If the format itself is new to you, What Is JSON? explains the whole thing in five minutes with examples.