How to Format XML in Notepad++, VS Code, xmllint and Python

Notepad++ and VS Code do not format XML natively, so each requires a free extension, after which a single shortcut applies the formatting. Command-line users can use xmllint, while Python scripts can handle many files using minidom, ElementTree.indent() or lxml. All these tools require well-formed XML, and if a tag is unclosed they report the line number where the problem lies. Formatting only adds line breaks and indentation, leaving the underlying data unchanged. For simple reading, browsers such as Chrome display XML as an indented tree without any formatting step.