Online notepad
A quiet place to write, with the caret already in the paper. Every note is kept in this browser and nothing is sent to a server, so a draft you would not email is safe to type here.
Start writing. It is saved as you go, and it is here next time.
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Removed from this browser.
Kept in this browser only. Create an account to keep them on every device.
Nothing is uploaded. Every note lives in this browser, under floi:notepad, and clearing your site data clears them. Download the ones you mean to keep. Only a note you star with an account reaches a server.
How to write a note online
Start writing
The caret is already in the paper. There is nothing to open, nothing to sign into and no button to press first.
It is written down as you go
The note is saved to this browser about a third of a second after you stop typing. The rail says "Saved" when it happens.
Come back to it, or take it with you
Close the tab and the note is here next time. Press the download arrow for a .txt file, or the copy button for the clipboard.
Using the notepad
Seven buttons, and they all sit on the two thin rails above and below the paper. Nothing floats over the text you are writing, and the find bar only appears when you ask for it. This section says what each control does and when you would reach for it.
The notes strip
Along the top rail. Each note gets a tab, named after its own first line, so nothing asks you to title a thought before you have had it. Press + for a new one.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| A tab | Opens that note. The one you were in is written down first, so switching never loses a keystroke. |
| + | Starts a new note and puts the caret in it. Called Untitled until it has a first line. |
| The × on the open tab | Deletes that note. Only the open tab has one, so a row of crosses cannot cost you the wrong note by half a centimetre of mis-aim. |
| Undo bar | Appears for six seconds after a delete and puts the note back where it was. There is no confirmation dialog, because this is better than one. |
| Left and right arrows | Move between notes when a tab has focus. |
The paper, and the save state
The note is written to this browser about a third of a second after you stop typing, and the dot on the bottom rail turns green and says Saved when it happens. It then settles to Saved in this browser and stays there.
To the left of it sit three figures that move as you type: words, characters, and how long the note takes to read at 238 words a minute. They are read rather than pressed, which is why they are at the far end of the rail from the buttons. On a narrow phone the reading time drops off first.
That pill is on the rail rather than in the small print for a reason. I typed into all seven notepads ranking for this phrase and reloaded them. One came back empty. Another came back holding a draft from 27 minutes earlier, having never saved the sentence I typed five seconds before. A claim you can watch happen beats a claim you have to take on trust, and the guide has the method and every result.
If the dot ever turns red and says Not saved, this browser has refused to store any more. That is nearly always a full storage quota or a locked-down privacy setting. Download the note, because from that point nothing new is being kept.
Aa: typeface, size and line length
One button on the bottom rail, holding the three settings that change how the text reads. They are remembered for next time, per browser. A font picker is used twice and read a thousand times, which is why it is behind a button rather than out on the rail.
| Setting | Options | When you would change it |
|---|---|---|
| Typeface | Sans, Serif, Mono | Serif for anything longer than a screen. Mono when you are lining up columns or pasting a snippet, because every character is the same width. |
| Size | Small, Medium, Large | Large is not an accessibility setting, it is a writing one. Bigger text on a wide screen is the cheapest way to stop skim-reading your own draft. |
| Line length | Narrow, Wide | Narrow holds the line to 68 characters, which is where your eye stops losing the start of the next one. Wide uses the whole panel, which suits lists and code. This is the text column, not the panel: in full screen the bar at the top sizes the panel and this still sizes the column inside it. |
Dark mode
There is no separate switch on the notepad, because the whole site has one. The moon in the site header flips every page, this one included, and the choice is remembered. Left alone it follows whatever your operating system is set to, so a machine that goes dark at sunset takes the notepad with it.
Find
Press Ctrl + F, or Cmd + F, and a slim bar opens under the notes strip. Type and it jumps to the first match and counts the rest.Enter goes to the next, Shift + Enter to the previous, andEsc closes it.
The two chevrons beside the count step backwards and forwards without touching the keyboard, and the × closes the bar.
This exists because your browser's own find cannot do it. Text inside a text box is a value rather than part of the page, so the browser's search skips it entirely. That is also why the shortcut is worth taking over here and almost nowhere else.
Copy, download and full screen
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Copy | Puts the whole note on the clipboard. |
| Download | Saves a .txt file named after the note's first line. Plain UTF-8, opening in anything. |
| Full screen | Moves the panel into the whole viewport. The page around it has nothing to add while you are writing. |
Copy and download are also what record a run on the Recent rail under the panel. Typing records nothing, on purpose: a draft is not a piece of finished work and a history full of half-sentences helps nobody. The rail keeps your last ten, in this browser only.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Keys | Does |
|---|---|
| Ctrl + S or Cmd + S | Downloads the note as a .txt file. |
| Ctrl + F or Cmd + F | Opens Find. |
| Enter in Find | Next match. With Shift, the previous one. |
| Esc | Closes Find, then leaves full screen. |
| ← and → on a tab | Move between notes. |
Three shortcuts and no more. Each one takes over a key your browser already uses, and that is only worth doing where the browser's own version does not work on this page.
What the notepad will not do
The list below is what other tools do that this one does not, said plainly rather than left for you to find out.
| Not here | Why, and what to do instead |
|---|---|
| Bold, italics, headings | It holds plain text. If you want a formatted document, write it in a word processor. Markdown syntax survives a paste into almost anything. |
| Sync between devices | There is nothing on a server to sync from. Download the file, or send it with file transfer. |
| Share a note by link | A link means a copy on somebody's server. On one popular notepad your note is public by default unless you register. |
| Replace, as in find and replace | Find is here, replace is not. Bulk editing text is a different job, and doing it badly on a draft is worse than not offering it. |
| Export to PDF or DOCX | Plain text only. One open-source rival, notepad.js.org, does write both, and it is the better tool if that is what you need. |
| Ambient sound or a typing noise | No audio at all. It is a real feature elsewhere and it is not one this page is going to add. |
| Passwords or encryption | Nothing here is encrypted. Anyone with your unlocked machine can read the notes, exactly as they could read a text file on your desktop. |
Why write notes online at all
Because the browser is already open. A note you have to launch an app for is a note you write somewhere worse, usually in a message to yourself. The whole value of a web notepad is that it is one tab away from whatever you were already doing.
The usual cost of that convenience is your text landing on somebody's server. That cost is not necessary. A browser has had a perfectly good local store since 2009, and every notepad that uploads your note is choosing to, for reasons that have nothing to do with you.
So this one does not. There is no account, no sync, no share link and no note that is public by default, and the price of that is exactly the one stated above: your notes live on the device you wrote them on. The guide has the full measurement, including how much every other option puts on screen before you can type.
Frequently asked questions
Where are my notes actually stored?
In this browser, in localStorage, under the key floi:notepad. You can open your developer tools and read it. There is no account behind the notepad and no request is made when you type, so a note about a salary, a password reset or an unfinished resignation letter stays on the machine it was written on. Only a note you star with an account is copied anywhere.
Will my notes still be here after I close the browser?
Yes. localStorage survives closing the tab, quitting the browser and restarting the machine. It does not survive you clearing site data, and Safari deletes it after seven days of not visiting the site. That last one is a real limit rather than a bug, and it is why the notepad has a download button. Anything you would be upset to lose should be a file.
What happens if I clear my browsing history?
It depends which box you tick. Clearing history alone leaves the notes. Clearing cookies and site data removes them, because that is the same store. Chrome, Firefox and Safari all group the two together by default in the one-click version of the dialog, so assume that any clear you do casually will take the notes with it.
Can I open the same notes on my phone?
No, and that is the trade. Notes are kept by your browser and browsers do not share storage between devices, so there is nothing to sync because there is nothing on a server to sync from. To move a note, press the download arrow and send yourself the .txt, or use file transfer to push it straight to the other device. A notepad that appeared on every device you own would be a notepad that had uploaded your notes.
How long can one note be?
Longer than anything you will type into it. Browsers give an origin about 5 MB of localStorage, which is roughly 2.5 million characters, or about 400,000 words shared across all your notes. A 90,000-word novel would fit four times over. If you do fill it, the save state turns red and says so rather than quietly dropping the last thing you wrote.
Is this Notepad++?
No. Notepad++ is a Windows program with syntax highlighting, macros, plugins and multi-file search, and nothing in a browser tab is a substitute for it. This is a plain writing surface: text in, text out, kept where you left it. If you came looking for Notepad++ online, the honest answer is that no web page is that, and the closest thing is a local install.
Can I make text bold or add a heading?
Not as formatting. The notepad holds plain text, so what you save is exactly the characters you typed. That is deliberate: plain text opens in everything, is never subtly mangled by a paste, and will still be readable in twenty years. Markdown works fine as a convention, so **bold** and a leading # carry meaning to anything you paste into later. Nothing renders it here.
Does it work in a private or incognito window?
It works, and it forgets. A private window gives the page a storage area that is thrown away when the last private window closes, so the notepad behaves normally right up to the point where the window goes and everything in it goes too. The save state cannot tell the difference and will say "Saved in this browser", which is true until it is not. Download anything you want to keep before closing.