> Is using auto-formatting tools particularly widespread? Don't most people just format the code to their liking as they write it? Am I completely off base here?

It's everywhere in the javascript world. I started using it a few years ago and would never go back. Having a consistent formatting when working with a team is great and it comes at basically no costs.

And for the few exceptions where the auto-formatted code is harder to read, it can be disabled by a comment.