A Simple Notepad That Lives in Your Browser
Sometimes you just need a place to write something down: a phone number read out on a call, a rough idea for a blog post, a list of things to buy on the way home. A heavy word processor feels like too much, and a scrap of paper always goes missing when you need it.
This online notepad is built for those moments. Open the page and start typing, with nothing to install and no account to create. Every word saves automatically in your browser as you type, so you can close the tab, restart your computer and find your note waiting for you the next time you come back.
How to Use the Online Notepad
- Click inside the writing area and start typing. The first line of your note becomes its title in the notes list.
- Watch the small dot in the bottom corner. It turns amber while saving and green once your words are safe.
- Press New to start another note. All your notes appear under My Notes, with the most recently edited at the top.
- Click any note in the list to switch to it. Your cursor position is remembered, so you continue exactly where you stopped.
- Use Download to save the current note as a .txt file, or Copy to paste it into an email or chat.
Features That Make Writing Easier
- Multiple notes. Keep a shopping list, meeting notes and story ideas side by side, and search through all of them from the box above the list.
- Find and replace. Press Ctrl+F to search the current note. Jump between matches with Enter, turn on match case, and replace one match or all of them at once. Every replacement can be undone.
- Date and time stamp. Press F5 or the Date button to insert the current date and time at your cursor, which is perfect for diaries, logs and call notes.
- Open text files. Open a .txt, .md, .csv or other text file, or simply drag it onto the editor, and it becomes a new note.
- Focus mode. Hide everything else on the page and write on a calm, full-screen page. Press Esc to come back.
- Live counts. The status bar shows your line, column, words and characters.
Make It Comfortable to Write In
The Settings panel lets you adjust the notepad to suit you. Choose a clean sans-serif font for everyday notes, a serif font for longer writing, or a monospaced font when you are jotting down code or lining up columns of text. Make the text anywhere from 12 to 28 pixels.
You can also turn word wrap off when you are working with long lines, such as lists of links or log files, and switch spell check on or off. If you are writing code or outlines, enable Tab key inserts a tab so the Tab key indents your text instead of moving to the next button. Your choices are remembered on your device.
Where Are My Notes Saved?
Your notes are stored in your browser's local storage, a small private space every website gets on your own device. Nothing you write is sent to a server, so not even I can read it. That makes the notepad quick and private, but it also means your notes belong to this browser on this device. If you open the page on your phone, you will see a separate, empty notepad.
There is one important thing to keep in mind. If you clear your browsing data, use a private or incognito window, or uninstall the browser, your notes can be deleted along with everything else. For anything you care about, use Backup now and then. It downloads all your notes in a single small file. Later, or on another device, press Restore, pick that file and your notes come back. Restoring never overwrites the notes you already have; it only adds the ones that are missing.
Most browsers give each website around five megabytes, enough for thousands of pages of plain text, and the notes panel shows how much you are using.
Handy Ways to Use It
Students take quick notes during online classes. Writers keep a running list of ideas and first drafts. Developers paste in code or JSON to search through. It also makes a great scratch pad for long online forms: write your answers here first, and if the form times out, your text is still safe.
You can even keep it open in two tabs; changes in one show up in the other.
Tips and Keyboard Shortcuts
- Ctrl+S (or Cmd+S on a Mac) downloads the current note as a text file.
- Ctrl+F opens find and replace while you are writing. Enter goes to the next match and Shift+Enter to the previous one.
- Alt+N creates a new note, and F5 inserts the date and time.
- Deleted something by mistake? Press Undo in the message that appears at the bottom of the screen.