Free online notepad — a Notepad++ alternative in your browser

Free Online Notepad — Write, Autosave, No Sign-Up

Type anything and it saves in your browser — no login, no install, works offline. Add line numbers, tabs and syntax highlighting when you need them, which also makes it a solid Notepad++ alternative.

This online notepad is a fast, distraction-free text and code editor that runs entirely in your browser — no install, no signup, and no upload. Open the page and start typing immediately. Everything you write is auto-saved to your own device in the browser's IndexedDB storage, with a version history, so your notes are still here the next time you visit. Nothing is ever sent to a server, which makes it a genuinely private place to draft code, jot quick notes, or clean up text.

Under the hood it uses CodeMirror 6, the editor engine behind many professional web IDEs, giving you real syntax highlighting, line numbers, bracket matching, code folding, find & replace, multiple tabs, and one-click code formatting. It works on Windows, macOS, Linux, Chromebook, iPad, Android, and any modern browser — your browser is the editor.

People reach for it as an online notepad with autosave, an online scratchpad for throwaway notes, a notepad that works offline on a flight, or an online notepad with no login when they just need a blank page fast. It doubles as a quick online JSON formatter, a place to draft Markdown, clean up messy text, or sketch a snippet before pasting it back into your project.

Writing, saving and coming back later

The notepad saves as you type. Every tab is written to your browser's IndexedDB storage a second after you change it — there is no 5 MB limit like the older localStorage — so a crash, a closed window or a dropped connection costs you nothing — open the page again on the same device and browser and every tab reopens where you left off. Because the text lives on your device and not on a server, it stays private; it only disappears if you clear this site's browser data. Use it as a scratchpad for pasting and cleaning text, a place to hold something between apps, or a notebook you keep open all day. After your first visit the page itself is stored on your device too, so it opens and keeps working offline — on a flight or a bad connection. In Chrome and Edge you can also install it as an app from the install icon in the address bar.

A code editor when you need one

Pick a language, or open a file, and the notepad becomes a browser-based code editor with syntax highlighting for 35 languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, JSON, SQL, KQL (Kusto), PowerShell, Bash, Windows batch (.bat, .cmd), YAML, TOML, INI and .env, Terraform/HCL, Bicep, Dockerfile, Nginx, Markdown, Java, Kotlin, Swift, C, C++, C#, PHP, Ruby, Go, Rust, Lua, Perl, R and Visual Basic. You get line numbers, bracket matching, code folding and one-click formatting — paste messy JSON, choose JSON and press Shift+Alt+F and it is pretty-printed, which makes it a quick online JSON formatter; the same works for HTML, CSS and JavaScript. HTML and Markdown can be previewed live next to the source and exported to a styled HTML file or printed to PDF.

Editing feels like a desktop editor. Ctrl+F opens a Notepad++-style find & replace with match case, whole word, regular expressions and capture groups such as $1; every match is highlighted and counted, and Replace All is a single undo step. Ctrl+Shift+P opens a VS Code-style command palette, Ctrl+D adds the next match to a multi-cursor selection, and Sublime-style shortcuts duplicate (Ctrl+Shift+D), delete (Ctrl+Shift+K), move and join lines.

Run HTML, CSS and JavaScript online

Press ▶ Run or Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac) and the code in the current tab runs in a panel next to the editor, with a console underneath. That makes the notepad a small online HTML and JavaScript compiler, or more precisely a runner, since browsers interpret JavaScript rather than compile it.

• JavaScript: the tab runs as a script on an empty page. console.log(), console.warn() and console.error() show up in the console, objects and arrays are printed as formatted JSON, and repeated messages are collapsed with a counter. Uncaught errors and rejected promises appear in red with the line number from the editor.
• HTML: the page renders live while you type, scripts included, and its console output lands in the same panel. Write a whole page with <style> and <script> tags in one tab.
• CSS: your stylesheet is applied to a sample page with headings, a paragraph, a link, a list, a button, an input and a table, so you can see what a rule does.
• Markdown: Run opens the rendered preview.

JavaScript and CSS only run when you ask, never on every keystroke, so a half-typed loop cannot freeze the page while you type. If you do write an endless loop, close the preview with ✕ or reload: the notepad autosaves, so nothing is lost. The code runs in a sandboxed iframe without access to this page: it cannot read your other tabs, your saved notes or the site's storage, and nothing is sent to a server. Python, PHP, C# and the other languages in the menu get syntax highlighting and formatting, but no Run; they need a real interpreter or compiler, which a static page cannot offer.

Notepad++ online: what carries over

Notepad++ is a free Windows desktop editor, and there is no official web version. This page is an online alternative that works the way Notepad++ users expect: a tab per file, line numbers, syntax highlighting for 20 languages, a find and replace dialog with match case, whole word, regular expressions and $1 capture groups, search across all open tabs, sort lines, remove duplicates, Base64 and URL encoding, and a side-by-side compare, column (block) selection with Alt+drag, and an Encoding menu. It runs on a Mac, a Chromebook, a locked-down work PC or a phone, where Notepad++ cannot be installed. Files keep their line endings and their encoding: a Windows file with CRLF in Windows-1252 (often called ANSI) is saved as CRLF and Windows-1252 again, and the status bar shows both — click to convert. What it does not have are Notepad++ plugins.

Notepad++ features online: bookmarks, macros, column editor, find in files

The things Notepad++ users reach for every day work here with the same shortcuts.

• Bookmarks: Ctrl+F2 bookmarks a line (or click the margin), F2 and Shift+F2 jump between them. The Search menu copies, cuts or removes all bookmarked lines, removes every unmarked line, or inverts the bookmarks. Together with Mark All in the Find box — which highlights every match and bookmarks its line — that is the classic Notepad++ way to keep or delete all lines containing a word, also with a regular expression.
• Macros: Ctrl+Shift+R starts and stops recording; typing, arrow keys, Home/End, Enter, Delete and the editor shortcuts are recorded. Ctrl+Shift+M plays the macro back, and Macro → Run Multiple Times runs it a set number of times or until the end of the file. Macros can be saved by name.
• Column mode and Column Editor: hold Alt and drag to select a block of text across lines and type on all of them at once. Alt+C opens the Column Editor: insert the same text on every line, or a number sequence with a start value, step, repeat, leading zeros and decimal, hex, octal or binary format.
• Find in Files: open a folder (Chrome, Edge) and Ctrl+Shift+F searches every file in it, with match case, whole word, regular expressions and filters such as *.js *.md. Click a result to open the file at that line. Replace in Files writes the changes to disk and keeps each file's encoding and line endings. Hidden folders, node_modules, build output and binary files are skipped.
• Document map and split view: View → Document Map shows the whole file as a minimap next to the editor, with your bookmarks; click or drag it to scroll. Split View shows the same file twice, side by side or stacked, so you can edit one part while reading another — both stay in sync and share one undo history.
• Hex view: binary files open in a read-only hex viewer (offset, hex bytes, ASCII) that handles files of any size; search for text or for bytes such as 4D 5A 90, and go to an offset with Ctrl+G and 0x…. View → View as Hex shows the bytes of any open file.
• Line operations: trim leading, trailing or both, remove consecutive duplicates, sort A→Z with or without case, by length or by column (comma, semicolon, tab, pipe or spaces, as text, number or natural order, keeping a header line), shuffle, and number lines.

Open large files and huge log files

Most online editors freeze on a big file. This notepad has two gears. Files up to 64 MB open in the normal editor; from 8 MB on, syntax highlighting is switched off so typing stays fast. Anything bigger — server logs, CSV exports, SQL dumps of hundreds of megabytes or several gigabytes — opens in a large file viewer that never loads the whole file into memory. It builds an index of where every line starts (a 75 MB log with 900,000 lines takes about a second), then reads only the lines on screen straight from the file. Search streams through the whole file with match case, whole word and regular expressions; only matches turns it into a grep-style filter that shows just the matching lines, Ctrl+G jumps to any line, and matches to tab or edit this part copies the matching lines, or the lines around your position, into a normal editable tab. Use File → Open Large File to choose the viewer for a smaller file too. The viewer is read-only.

File encodings: UTF-8, ANSI and UTF-16

Old Windows files, CSV exports from Excel and files from other languages are often not UTF-8. When you open a file the notepad reads its bytes and detects the encoding: a byte order mark (BOM) means UTF-8 with BOM or UTF-16, text that is valid UTF-8 stays UTF-8, and anything else is read as Windows-1252 — the Western "ANSI" code page, which also covers ISO-8859-1. Saving writes the same encoding, BOM and line endings back, so a file you only fixed one line in stays byte-for-byte the same everywhere else. Click the encoding in the status bar (or File → Encoding) to reopen the file with another encoding when accents look garbled, such as Café instead of Café, or to convert it, for example from ANSI to UTF-8. Supported: UTF-8, UTF-8 with BOM, UTF-16 LE and BE, Windows-1250/1251/1252/1253/1254/1257, ISO-8859-15, KOI8-R, DOS 866 and Mac Roman; Shift_JIS, GBK, Big5 and EUC-KR can be read and are saved as UTF-8. If a character does not exist in the target encoding, the notepad tells you before it becomes a question mark.

Version history and saving back to disk

Every tab keeps a version history (File → Version History, Ctrl+Shift+H): a snapshot when you open or save a file, before every big change — formatting, a transform, Replace All, a reload — when you close the tab, and every three minutes while you type. Pick a version to see what changed compared to now, then restore it (one Ctrl+Z takes you back) or open it in a new tab. Closed tabs stay in the list too. In Chrome and Edge, a file you open with Open, drag onto the editor or pick from a folder stays linked to the file on your computer: Ctrl+S writes straight back to it, also after you reload the page. When another program changes the file, an unchanged tab reloads by itself and an edited tab warns you. Installed as an app, the notepad can also be chosen in “Open with” for text files.

Cleaning up text and comparing files

The Transform menu is a small text toolbox: sort lines alphabetically or numerically, reverse them, remove duplicate or blank lines, change case, trim trailing whitespace, Base64 or URL encode and decode, and format or minify JSON. Each transform works on your selection, or on the whole document when nothing is selected. To see what changed between two versions, open them in two tabs and press ⇆ Diff: added, removed and changed lines are colour-coded, the exact characters that differ are highlighted, and both panes scroll together.

In Chrome and Edge you can open a whole folder from your computer: a file tree appears, and Ctrl+S saves straight back to the original file after the browser asks your permission. Sessions (File → Sessions) save a named set of tabs — “work”, “scratch”, “blog drafts” — to load again later, and Alt+Shift+T reopens any of the last 20 closed tabs.

Want to send a file to someone securely? Copy it into the private pastebin and share it as an end-to-end encrypted link — optional password and expiry, syntax highlighting for the reader, and nothing stored on a server.

Local AI writing assist

Press Ctrl+Shift+A or open the AI menu to summarize, fix grammar, rewrite in a formal or casual tone, explain, or continue your text — or type your own instruction. It runs a real language model in your browser through WebLLM and WebGPU. Pick one of the newest small open models — Qwen 3.5 (0.8B, 2B, 4B, 9B), Qwen 3, Google's Gemma 4 E2B, Mistral's Ministral 3 or Microsoft's Phi-4 mini. The model downloads once (roughly 0.4 to 5 GB) and then works fully offline, with no account, no API key and no usage limit; nothing you write is sent anywhere. It needs a desktop browser with WebGPU, such as Chrome, Edge or Brave.

Devices and privacy

It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Chromebook, iPad and Android in any modern browser. It is free, needs no login, and never uploads your notes. This notepad is independent and not affiliated with the Notepad++ project.

Notepad vs other editors

For heavy projects a full desktop IDE still wins, but when you just need to open something now — on any machine, with zero setup — a browser-based editor is hard to beat. It's ideal for quick snippets, interview coding, Markdown drafts, config files, and scratch notes.

Related free tools

Part of a collection of free, no-signup browser tools. A few that pair well with the notepad: