Notepad

How to write a note online

1. Start writing

There is no step before this one. No account, no "create a note" button, no empty state asking what kind of document you would like. The cursor is in the page when it loads.

2. It is written down as you go

Every change is saved to this browser a fraction of a second after you stop typing, and the state says so. If storage is blocked, a private window, or a browser set to refuse site data, it says that instead, rather than letting you write for an hour into nothing.

3. Come back to it, or take it with you

The notes are here next time you open the page on this device. Download gives you a plain .txt, which is the format most likely to still open in twenty years.

Where the notes actually live

In this browser's own storage, on this device. Not on a server, not in an account, and not synced anywhere, which is the point, and also the limitation. They are not on your phone, they do not survive clearing site data, and a colleague on the same machine and the same browser profile can read them.

For a scratchpad, a draft, a thing you are thinking through, that trade is the right way round: nothing to sign up for and nothing sent anywhere. For anything you cannot afford to lose, download it.

The notes strip, and why nothing asks for a title

A note is named by its own first line. Asking for a title is a step before writing, and a tool that makes you name a thought before you can have it is a tool people close. Write the first line and the tab renames itself.

Undo, and the other way notes get lost

Everyone worries about losing a tab. In practice the commoner loss is a mis-clicked delete, and most notepads make that final. Deleting keeps the note until the next delete, so Undo is always there for the mistake you just made, and the note comes back in the position it was in, not at the end, because a note restored somewhere else is one you cannot find.

Aa: typeface, size and line length

You may be sitting in front of this for an hour, and the defaults suit nobody in particular. Serif for long prose, mono for anything structured, sans for everything else.

Line length is set in characters rather than pixels, because that is what actually governs readability: somewhere between 45 and 75 characters a line for sustained reading. Past that the eye loses the start of the next line and you re-read one twice, which is why full-width text in a maximised window is tiring in a way that has nothing to do with the font.

Find

Find within the note, with a count, and Enter to step forward through the matches, Shift with it to go back. Cmd or Ctrl with F puts the cursor in the field.

What this notepad will not do

No formatting: this is plain text, and the value of plain text is that it survives. No sync between devices, no sharing, no collaboration, no folders. If you want those, you want an app with an account, and the trade for that account is where your notes are kept.