Introducing Forja — A Better JSON Viewer for Chrome
Meet Forja: a Chrome extension that replaces your browser's plain-text JSON with an interactive tree view, JSONata querying, and lossless big numbers.
Your Browser’s JSON View Is Broken
If you work with APIs, you look at raw JSON in your browser every day. And every day, your browser shows you a wall of unformatted text — or at best, a basic collapsible tree with no search, no querying, and no way to copy a nested path without selecting it by hand.
Forja fixes that.
What Is Forja?
Forja is a Chrome extension that automatically detects JSON responses and renders them in a full-featured, interactive viewer. No buttons to click, no manual activation — navigate to a JSON endpoint or open a .json file, and Forja takes over.
Key Features
Interactive Tree View. Collapse and expand nodes, navigate with breadcrumbs, and handle massive datasets with virtual scrolling. Indent guides and depth indicators keep you oriented in deeply nested structures.
JSONata Querying. Forja ships with a built-in JSONata query engine. Filter, transform, and reshape JSON without leaving your browser. Query history keeps your frequently used expressions within reach, and a split pane shows original data alongside results.
Lossless Big Numbers. JavaScript silently rounds numbers outside its safe integer range. Forja doesn’t. Financial data, database IDs, timestamps — every digit is preserved exactly as the server sent it.
Syntax Highlighting. Strings, numbers, booleans, nulls, keys, and brackets are all color-coded. Switch to the raw view for a full CodeMirror-powered editor with syntax highlighting.
Search. Hit Cmd+F (or Ctrl+F) to search across all keys and values. Results are highlighted inline, and ancestor nodes expand automatically as you navigate between matches.
Dark & Light Themes. Toggle between dark, light, and system-matched themes. Font size and indentation width are configurable.
More Under the Hood
- Auto-detection — Activates on
application/jsonresponses,.jsonURLs, and JSONP content - Large file handling — Files over 10MB get options to load fully, collapsed, or in raw view
- Context menu — Copy a node’s JSON path, value, or entire subtree with a right-click
- URL detection — URLs inside JSON values are automatically highlighted and clickable
- Sort keys — Toggle alphabetical key sorting with one click
- Download — Export the formatted JSON as a file with automatic naming
Available Now on the Chrome Web Store
Forja is live on the Chrome Web Store. Installation is one click — and from that point on, every JSON response you visit will look better.
Learn more: Forja product page