Reverse the order of lines

Three different ways to reverse text

"Reverse" can mean several things, and this tool covers the three that people actually need. The first is reversing the order of the lines, so that the last one becomes the first and the first becomes the last. The second is reversing the order of the words inside every line while keeping the lines where they are. The third is writing every line backwards, letter by letter, which produces the mirror text used in puzzles and games.

When reversing the order of lines is useful

Many exports list the oldest entry first, but you want the newest at the top: a chat history, a change log, a bank statement copied as text, or a list of commits. Flipping the list takes one click and avoids sorting by a date column that may not even exist in plain text. The same trick is handy for reading a list from the bottom up, for turning an ascending numbered list into a descending one, or for undoing a previous reversal.

Reversing words and letters

Reversing the words changes "one two three" into "three two one" without touching the spaces between them. Reversing the letters turns "hello" into "olleh". The letter reversal works on whole characters, so accented letters and emoji are kept intact instead of being split into broken pieces, which is a common problem with quick scripts.

Tidy the input first

Two optional clean-ups are available before reversing: trim the spaces at the beginning and end of every line and remove blank lines. Blank lines are otherwise kept, and they move with their neighbours when the order is reversed.

What it does not do

Reversing letters is a purely visual mirror of the text; it does not translate anything and it does not turn writing into a right-to-left script. Text that mixes languages written in different directions may display in an unexpected order, because the browser applies its own bidirectional rules when showing the result.