jless

jless is a command-line JSON viewer designed to replace the typical workflow of using less, jq, cat, and text editors for examining JSON files. Written in Rust, it provides a single standalone binary for interactive JSON exploration.

The tool displays JSON with clean syntax highlighting, removing visual clutter by omitting quotes around object keys, closing delimiters, and trailing commas. Users can expand and collapse objects and arrays to navigate between high-level structure and detailed content. It includes vim-inspired movement commands for efficient navigation and full regex-based search functionality for locating specific data within large JSON files.

jless targets developers and system administrators who frequently work with JSON files and APIs. It supports macOS and Linux, with Windows support planned. The tool can be installed through various package managers including Homebrew, system package managers like pacman and xbps, or built from source using Cargo.

Installation

# via Homebrew
brew install jless

# via Cargo
cargo install jless

# via Arch Linux
pacman -S jless