PaulJuliusMartinez/jless

jless is a command-line JSON viewer designed for reading, exploring, and searching through JSON data.

Rust

5,510

276 commits

updated Sep 7, 2026

See the code

README

jless logo and mascot

jless is a command-line JSON viewer. Use it as a replacement for whatever combination of less, jq, cat and your editor you currently use for viewing JSON files. It is written in Rust and can be installed as a single standalone binary.

ci

Features

  • Clean syntax highlighted display of JSON data, omitting quotes around object keys, closing object and array delimiters, and trailing commas.
  • Expand and collapse objects and arrays so you can see both the high- and low-level structure of the data.
  • A wealth of vim-inspired movement commands for efficiently moving around and viewing data.
  • Full regex-based search for finding exactly the data you're looking for.

jless currently supports macOS and Linux. Windows support is planned.

Installation

You can install jless using various package managers:

Operating System / Package ManagerCommand
macOS - HomeBrewbrew install jless
macOS - MacPortssudo port install jless
Linux - HomeBrewbrew install jless
Arch Linuxpacman -S jless
Void Linuxsudo xbps-install jless
NetBSDpkgin install jless
FreeBSDpkg install jless
From source (Requires Rust toolchain)cargo install jless

The releases page also contains links to binaries for various architectures.

Dependencies

On Linux systems, X11 libraries are needed to build clipboard access if building from source. On Ubuntu you can install these using:

sudo apt-get install libxcb1-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev

Website

jless.io is the official website for jless. Code for the website is contained separately on the website branch.

The mascot of the jless project is Jules the jellyfish.

jless mascot

Art for Jules was created by annatgraphics.

License

jless is released under the MIT License.

cli
json
rust

Project health

crates.io

Latest release

0.9.0 · Jul 17, 2023

Releases this year

0

Significant stargazers

(top 24 of 137)

Justin Ridgewell

1,327 followers · starred Feb 2022

Ahmet Alp Balkan

8,913 followers · starred Oct 2023

Jake Shadle

208 followers · starred Feb 2022

David Peter

8,313 followers · starred Feb 2022

PaulJuliusMartinez/jless

jless is a command-line JSON viewer designed for reading, exploring, and searching through JSON data.

Rust

5,510

276 commits

updated Sep 7, 2026

See the code

README

jless logo and mascot

jless is a command-line JSON viewer. Use it as a replacement for whatever combination of less, jq, cat and your editor you currently use for viewing JSON files. It is written in Rust and can be installed as a single standalone binary.

ci

Features

  • Clean syntax highlighted display of JSON data, omitting quotes around object keys, closing object and array delimiters, and trailing commas.
  • Expand and collapse objects and arrays so you can see both the high- and low-level structure of the data.
  • A wealth of vim-inspired movement commands for efficiently moving around and viewing data.
  • Full regex-based search for finding exactly the data you're looking for.

jless currently supports macOS and Linux. Windows support is planned.

Installation

You can install jless using various package managers:

Operating System / Package ManagerCommand
macOS - HomeBrewbrew install jless
macOS - MacPortssudo port install jless
Linux - HomeBrewbrew install jless
Arch Linuxpacman -S jless
Void Linuxsudo xbps-install jless
NetBSDpkgin install jless
FreeBSDpkg install jless
From source (Requires Rust toolchain)cargo install jless

The releases page also contains links to binaries for various architectures.

Dependencies

On Linux systems, X11 libraries are needed to build clipboard access if building from source. On Ubuntu you can install these using:

sudo apt-get install libxcb1-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev

Website

jless.io is the official website for jless. Code for the website is contained separately on the website branch.

The mascot of the jless project is Jules the jellyfish.

jless mascot

Art for Jules was created by annatgraphics.

License

jless is released under the MIT License.

cli
json
rust

Project health

crates.io

Latest release

0.9.0 · Jul 17, 2023

Releases this year

0

Significant stargazers

(top 24 of 137)

Justin Ridgewell

1,327 followers · starred Feb 2022

Ahmet Alp Balkan

8,913 followers · starred Oct 2023

Jake Shadle

208 followers · starred Feb 2022

David Peter

8,313 followers · starred Feb 2022