SmartQueryTools

Convert JSON to TSV Online

Convert JSON files to TSV format directly in your browser. No upload required — your data never leaves your device.

About converting JSON to TSV

JSON to TSV suits destinations that split lines on tabs: shell pipelines built on cut and awk, bioinformatics tools, and some warehouse bulk loaders. API data is full of free text with commas, such as addresses, product names and issue titles. In TSV those commas are ordinary characters, so a value like "Export slow, then times out" needs no quoting at all.

A field is only quoted when it contains a tab, a line break or a double quote. That matters for JSON sources, because description and comment fields often contain \n escapes. After conversion those become real line breaks inside a quoted field. Tools that read TSV one line at a time, including cut and awk, will split that record in two. If you plan to process the output with Unix tools, replace newlines in text fields first.

PostgreSQL users should note that COPY in its default text format also uses tabs but follows different rules: it expects \N for NULL and backslash escapes, not double quotes. Load this file with COPY ... WITH (FORMAT csv, DELIMITER E'\t', HEADER) instead, so quoted fields are unwrapped and empty fields are read as NULL.

Worked example

A small sample file, converted with the default settings.

Input (JSON)

[
  {
    "id": 4101,
    "title": "Login fails on Safari 17",
    "state": "open",
    "comments": 3,
    "created": "2026-03-02",
    "assignee": "maria"
  },
  {
    "id": 4102,
    "title": "Export slow, then times out",
    "state": "closed",
    "comments": 8,
    "created": "2026-03-03",
    "assignee": null
  },
  {
    "id": 4103,
    "title": "Add dark mode",
    "state": "open",
    "comments": 12,
    "created": "2026-03-05",
    "assignee": "dev-team"
  },
  {
    "id": 4104,
    "title": "Crash on empty file",
    "state": "closed",
    "comments": 0,
    "created": "2026-03-06",
    "assignee": "li.wei"
  }
]

Output (TSV)

id	title	state	comments	created	assignee
4101	Login fails on Safari 17	open	3	2026-03-02	maria
4102	Export slow, then times out	closed	8	2026-03-03	
4103	Add dark mode	open	12	2026-03-05	dev-team
4104	Crash on empty file	closed	0	2026-03-06	li.wei

What changes when you convert JSON to TSV

  • Columns are separated by tab characters. The header row lists the JSON keys in the order they first appear.
  • Commas inside values are left alone. The second issue title is unquoted here, where CSV output would quote it.
  • null and missing keys become empty fields, so the row for issue 4102 ends with a tab and nothing after it.
  • Values containing a tab, newline or double quote are wrapped in double quotes, with inner quotes doubled.
  • Nested objects and arrays are written as compact JSON text in a single field. Flatten before converting if you want one column per value.

Your file is processed locally in your browser and is never uploaded. The free limit is 50 MB per file; larger files work if your device has the memory for them.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens to JSON strings that contain tab characters?

A \t escape in the JSON is decoded to a real tab. The converter then wraps that field in double quotes so it stays in one column. Quote-aware readers such as pandas handle this, but cut and awk will still split on the tab, so strip tabs from free-text fields if you use those tools.

What happens to JSON arrays in the TSV?

Each array is kept as JSON text in a single field, so ["api","bug"] stays ["api","bug"], and arrays of objects keep their keys too. The field is wrapped in double quotes because it contains quote characters. To give each element its own row, unnest the array in the SQL Query tool first.

Can I pick which JSON keys end up in the TSV?

The converter writes every key it finds. To drop fields such as internal IDs or large blobs, run Manage Columns on the JSON file first, then convert the smaller file.

What is TSV format?

TSV (Tab-Separated Values) is similar to CSV but uses tab characters as delimiters — useful when data values contain commas.

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