TSV Viewer

Drop in a TSV file, tab-separated values, and read it as a proper table instead of columns that never line up in a text editor. The viewer splits each line on the tab character, lets you sort by any column and filter across every cell, and shows live row and column counts. Because tabs rarely appear inside data, TSV sidesteps the quoting headaches of CSV, so parsing is fast and predictable. Nothing is uploaded — the file is read in your browser, so database dumps and exports stay private.

How to use the TSV Viewer

Paste TSV text or load a .tsv, .tab, or .txt file. The table appears immediately, with row and column counts above it. Toggle First row is header off if your file has no header line, in which case generic column names like Col 1 are used and every line is treated as data. Cells are taken verbatim between tabs, so leading and trailing spaces inside a field are preserved.

Click any column heading to sort by it, and click again to reverse the order. Sorting is numeric when a column holds numbers and alphabetical otherwise, so a count column orders 2, 9, 10 correctly rather than as text. Type in the filter box to keep only the rows that contain your text in any cell, which is the quickest way to find a record in a long dump. Very large files are capped at a few thousand displayed rows for smooth scrolling, while the counts above the table always reflect the full file.

What TSV is and why the tab matters

TSV, tab-separated values, is the plainest possible tabular text format: each line is a record, and within a line the fields are separated by a single tab character (U+0009). It is the close sibling of CSV, but the choice of delimiter changes everything about how robust the format is in practice. Commas are extremely common inside real data, in names, addresses, prices, and free text, which forces CSV to wrap such fields in quotes and to escape quotes within them, the source of most CSV parsing bugs. Tabs, by contrast, almost never occur inside a data value, so TSV usually needs no quoting at all. A line is split on tabs and you are done, which makes the format fast to read, trivial to generate, and far less error-prone.

That simplicity is exactly why TSV is the default in places that move large volumes of tabular data between systems. It is the lingua franca of bioinformatics, where formats like BED, GFF, and VCF are tab-delimited and tools such as those in the SAM/BAM and genomics ecosystems read and write tabs by convention. It is the natural output of a database dump: MySQL's SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE and the mysql client both produce tab-separated columns by default, and many ETL pipelines pass TSV between stages. Spreadsheet applications put TSV on the clipboard when you copy a range, which is why pasting from a browser into Excel lands neatly in cells.

The format does have a formal description, the IANA text/tab-separated-values media type, which states that fields are separated by tabs and records by newlines, and that a literal tab cannot appear in a field. In the strict form there is no quoting mechanism at all, so any tab or newline inside a value must be escaped or removed before writing, often as the two-character sequences \t and \n. In return for that small restriction, TSV gives you a format with no ambiguity about where one field ends and the next begins. Compared with CSV it trades a tiny loss of flexibility for a large gain in predictability, which is why a TSV viewer rarely needs the elaborate quote-tracking state machine a CSV viewer demands.

Common use cases

  • Reading database dumps. Open the tab-separated output of a MySQL query or export as a real table.
  • Bioinformatics files. Inspect BED, GFF, VCF, or other tab-delimited genomics data without a spreadsheet.
  • Clipboard data. Paste a range copied from a spreadsheet, which is tab-separated, and browse it.
  • Finding a row. Filter a large export down to the records matching an ID, name, or status.

Frequently asked questions

How is TSV different from CSV?
TSV separates fields with tab characters instead of commas. Because tabs rarely appear inside data, TSV usually needs no quoting or escaping, which avoids the most common source of CSV parsing errors. This viewer splits each line on tabs directly.

Can I sort and filter the table?
Yes. Click any column header to sort, and click again to reverse. Sorting is numeric for numeric columns and alphabetical otherwise. The filter box keeps only rows containing your text in any cell.

What if my file has no header row?
Turn off First row is header. Every line is then treated as data and generic names like Col 1 are used for the columns.

Is there a row limit?
The whole file is parsed and counted, but the table displays up to a few thousand rows at once for responsiveness. Filtering narrows the visible set, and the counts always reflect the entire file.

Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. The TSV is read and parsed entirely in your browser with client-side JavaScript. Nothing is transmitted, so dumps and exports with sensitive data stay on your device.