Both Jmol and JSmol render an interactive 3D representation of a molecule or other structure that may be used as a teaching tool,[5] or for research, in several fields, e.g. chemistry, biochemistry, materials science, crystallography,[6] symmetry or nanotechnology.

It is free and open-source software released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.0.

[7] Jmol supports a wide range of chemical file formats, including Protein Data Bank (pdb), Crystallographic Information File (cif and mmcif), MDL Molfile (mol and sdf), and Chemical Markup Language (CML).

JSmol replaced the Jmol Java applet, which in turn had been previously developed as an alternative to the Chime plug-in,[5] both of which became unsupported by web browsers.

Jmol was initiated[8] to reproduce functions present in Chime (with the exception of the Sculpt mode) and has been continuously growing in features, surpassing the simple display of molecular structures.