How to use the online notepad
- 1Start typing in the note area. The footer shows Saving… and then Saved with the time.
- 2Press New note to start another; select any note in the list on the left to switch.
- 3Use Find & replace (or Ctrl+F in the note) to change words throughout a note.
- 4Press Download .txt for the current note or Download all (ZIP) to back up every note.
Downloading a note
Title: Shopping list Note: eggs, flour, milk
File: Shopping list.txt Contents: eggs, flour, milk
The title becomes the file name (characters such as / and : are replaced with a space); the file contains the note text.
How autosave works and where notes are stored
About 0.4 seconds after you stop typing, every note is written to your browser's local storage for this site. Nothing is sent to our server: there is no account and no sync, which is why it works offline once the page has loaded and why nobody else can read your notes. If you have the notepad open in two tabs, a change in one appears in the other. The footer always shows whether the latest change is saved; if the browser refuses to save (storage full or blocked), a red message tells you to download your notes.
Managing multiple notes
Press New note for a blank note; the newest appears at the top of the list. Notes are named by their title, or by their first line when the title is empty. Open .txt turns a text file from your computer into a new note. Delete note removes the open note and Delete all notes asks for confirmation first; either can be reversed with Undo for 10 seconds. Up to 200 notes can be kept. For heavier editing such as sorting lines, changing case or comparing versions, copy the text into the online text editor.
Find and replace
Find & replace searches the open note as you type and shows the number of matches. Find next (or Enter) selects the next match in the note, Shift+Enter goes back, Replace changes the selected match, and Replace all changes every match at once. Match case and Whole words narrow the search, so “cat” doesn't match “category”. For several replacements at once or regular expressions, use find and replace text.
Downloading, printing and backing up
Download .txt saves the open note as a UTF-8 text file named after its title. Download all (ZIP) saves every note as separate .txt files in one ZIP archive; this is the backup to keep before clearing your browser or switching computers. Print opens your browser's print dialog with the title and text only, which also lets you save as PDF. Copy puts the whole note on the clipboard. Word and character counts sit in the footer; the word counter adds sentences and reading time.
What happens if you clear browser data
Local storage is deleted when you clear cookies and site data (or “browsing data” including site data) for this site, when you use a private or incognito window and close it, and on some phones when the browser frees space for a site you haven't visited for weeks. Clearing only the cache or history usually leaves it in place, but browsers differ. Safari may remove storage for sites you haven't used in 7 days when tracking prevention is on. Treat the notepad as a scratchpad and download anything you need to keep.
Is my text private?
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your text is not uploaded to our servers.