How to use the online text editor
- 1Paste text, or press Open file to load a .txt, .csv, .md or other plain-text file.
- 2Select part of the text (or nothing, for all of it) and press an operation such as Trim line ends, Sort A–Z or Remove duplicate lines.
- 3Press Undo (Ctrl+Z) to reverse any step; use Find & replace for word changes.
- 4Press Compare to see line differences against an earlier version, then Download with your File name.
Cleaning a list in four clicks
Shopping list bananas apples milk Apples bread milk
apples Apples bananas bread milk Shopping list
Trim line ends, Remove empty lines, Remove duplicate lines, then Sort A–Z. Duplicate removal is case-sensitive, so “Apples” stays; sorting ignores case and puts numbers in numeric order.
Opening and saving .txt files
Open file reads a plain-text file from your device into the editor; nothing is uploaded. Text files of any extension work (.txt, .csv, .md, .log, .json, .srt, .html), up to 5 MB. Opening a file is an undoable step, so your previous text isn't lost. Download saves the text as UTF-8 with the name in File name (.txt is added if you leave out an extension); Ctrl+S inside the editor does the same. The text also survives a page reload in the same tab, and is cleared when the tab closes. For notes you want to keep between visits, use the online notepad.
Text operations: case, trim, sort, dedupe
Each button works on the selected text, or on everything when nothing is selected:
- Case: UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case (small words such as “of” stay lowercase) and Sentence case.
- Clean: Trim line ends removes spaces at the start and end of each line; Remove extra spaces also collapses runs of spaces and tabs; Remove empty lines; Tabs to spaces (4 spaces).
- Lines: Sort A–Z and Z–A ignore case and sort numbers naturally (2 before 10); Remove duplicate lines keeps the first copy (exact, case-sensitive match); Reverse line order.
For more options, such as case-insensitive duplicates or sorting by length, use remove duplicate lines and sort lines alphabetically.
Comparing two versions
Press Compare, paste the earlier version into Original version, and the Differences panel lists every line: removed lines are marked − and added lines +, with a count of each. A changed line shows as one removed and one added line. The comparison uses the longest common subsequence of lines, the method behind the classic diff tool, after skipping the identical start and end. Copy editor text here saves a snapshot before you start editing, so you can review exactly what your changes did.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+Z (⌘Z) | Undo, including operations and Replace all |
| Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z | Redo |
| Ctrl+F | Open Find & replace |
| Enter / Shift+Enter in Find | Next / previous match |
| Ctrl+S | Download |
| Esc in Find | Close Find & replace |
The editor keeps its own history of up to 100 steps, because the browser's built-in undo forgets changes made by buttons. Typing is grouped into word-sized steps.
Plain text vs rich text editors
Plain text is only characters and line breaks: no fonts, bold or images. That is what code, CSV files, subtitles, config files and text you paste into web forms need, and it is why this editor strips formatting when you paste from Word or a web page. To keep formatting and turn it into clean markup, use rich text to HTML instead.
Is my text private?
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your text is not uploaded to our servers.