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. It displays JSON data with clean syntax highlighting that omits quotes around object keys, closing delimiters, and trailing commas for improved readability.

The tool provides interactive navigation through JSON structures with expandable and collapsible objects and arrays, allowing users to examine both high-level structure and detailed content. It includes vim-inspired movement commands for efficient navigation and full regex-based search capabilities for locating specific data within JSON files.

Written in Rust, jless is distributed as a single standalone binary and currently supports macOS and Linux systems. The tool targets developers, system administrators, and anyone who regularly works with JSON data files and needs a more efficient viewing experience than traditional text-based tools.

Installation

# via Homebrew
brew install jless

# via Cargo
cargo install jless

# via Arch Linux
pacman -S jless