Text & writing Works offline
Secure Quick Notepad
A private notepad that keeps every note in your own browser, with autosaved drafts, search, sorting and one-click export to .txt or .md — and no daily limits of any kind.
Storage is unavailable in this browser. Notes cannot be kept between visits, so this page holds them in memory until you close the tab. Export or copy anything you need before leaving.
Write a note
New note.
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Words
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The draft autosaves about 0.8 seconds after you stop typing, so a refresh does not lose it. Saving a note never has a daily limit.
- Ctrl/Cmd + S save or update
- Ctrl/Cmd + Enter save as a new note
- Ctrl/Cmd + K jump to search
- Esc clear search
Saved notes 0
Results update as you type. Press Escape to clear the search.
No notes saved yet. Write something in the editor and choose Save note.
How this notepad works
This is a single text area in your browser. Whatever you type is written to the browser's
localStorage on your own device — not to a server, not to an account, not to a database. There is no
sign-up, no cookie wall and no request that leaves the page, which is why the tool keeps working with the network
unplugged.
Two things are stored for you. The draft is the exact contents of the editor, saved about 800
milliseconds after you stop typing, so an accidental refresh or a closed tab does not cost you the last paragraph.
The saved notes are the entries you deliberately kept: each one has a title taken from its first
line, a created date, an updated date and the full text. Everything sits under a single versioned key,
toolsly.notepad.v1, as JSON. The version in the key means a future format change can migrate your old
notes instead of silently discarding them.
The editor shows a live character, word and line count while you write. Save note appends a new
entry, Update open note overwrites the note you loaded from the list, Delete
removes an entry after asking you to confirm, and Clear editor empties only the text area — your
saved notes are never touched by it. The saved-notes panel filters as you type, sorts newest or oldest first, and
every read and write is wrapped in a try/catch: if the browser refuses to store anything, you get a
visible warning at the top instead of a silent failure.
One deliberate difference from the original version of this page: the old tool counted your notes and stopped letting you save after five per day, which punished exactly the people who write most. That counter has been removed entirely. Nothing here limits how much you can write, how many notes you keep, or how often you edit them.
Your notes never leave your device
"Local only" is a precise claim, so here is exactly what it does and does not buy you.
What it protects you from: a server-side breach, a company reading your notes, a third-party analytics profile of what you wrote, and any network interception. There is no copy of your text anywhere except your own machine, and an ad blocker or a proxy cannot see it because it is never transmitted.
What it does not protect you from: anyone with access to your device or your browser profile. localStorage is not encrypted and not password protected — it is a plain file in your browser's profile directory, readable by anyone who can open that profile, and readable by scripts running on this same origin. On a shared or family computer, a colleague's laptop, or a machine you do not control, treat these notes as public. Do not keep passwords, recovery codes or anything sensitive in them.
Clearing browser data deletes your notes permanently. Choosing "clear browsing data", "clear cookies and site data", or "clear storage" for this site removes the key, and there is no backup to restore from. Cleanup and privacy extensions can do the same thing without asking. Private or incognito windows usually give the page temporary storage that is destroyed the moment the window closes, sometimes they refuse storage outright, and in that case the warning at the top of the tool appears and your notes live only in the open tab. Finally, there is no sync of any kind: notes written in one browser stay in that browser, and notes written on one device are not visible on another. If a note matters, export it.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ctrl + S or Cmd + S | Save. Updates the note currently open in the editor, or creates a new note when none is open. |
| Ctrl + Enter or Cmd + Enter | Save as a new note, even when another note is open — handy for splitting one draft into two entries. |
| Ctrl + K or Cmd + K | Move focus to the search box and select what is already there. |
| Esc | Clear the search box and show every saved note again. |
| Tab / Shift + Tab | Walk through the editor, the counts, the buttons and every note in the list. |
The browser's own Ctrl + S "save page" dialog is suppressed while you are on this page, so the shortcut does what you expect a notepad to do.
Exporting and backing up your notes
Because browser storage is fragile, the export buttons are the important part of this tool. Export .txt writes every note to a plain text file in the sort order you have selected, with the title, the saved and updated timestamps, and a separator line before each entry. Export .md writes the same notes as Markdown: each note becomes a level-two heading with its text underneath, which drops straight into Obsidian, Joplin, Bear, Notion or any static-site generator. Copy all puts the text version on your clipboard so you can paste it into an email or another document without touching the filesystem.
The files are assembled entirely in your browser. The text is wrapped in a Blob, handed to
URL.createObjectURL() to get a short-lived local URL, and clicked through a temporary link that is
removed immediately afterwards. The URL is then released with revokeObjectURL() so the browser can
free the memory instead of holding every export for the life of the tab. No upload happens at any point, and the
tool works offline.
A practical backup habit: export once a week to a folder that is itself backed up, and export again before you clear your browsing data, reinstall your browser, or move to a new computer. Search first and sort as you like — the export follows the current order and includes every note, filtered or not.
Frequently asked questions
Does this notepad work offline, and is anything uploaded?
Yes, it works offline and nothing is uploaded. The page is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with no analytics, no fonts and no images loaded from the network. Your notes are written to your own browser storage with localStorage, and the export buttons build files locally with Blob and URL.createObjectURL, so the tool keeps working even with the network switched off.
Where exactly are my notes stored, and are they encrypted?
Every note lives under one key, toolsly.notepad.v1, inside your browser's localStorage for this site, as plain readable JSON on your disk. It is not encrypted and it is not password protected: anyone who can use your browser profile, or read your disk, can read the notes. localStorage is also per browser and per origin, so notes saved in Chrome are invisible to Firefox, and notes saved on your laptop are invisible on your phone.
Why did my notes disappear?
The usual causes are clearing browsing data or site data for this site, using a private or incognito window (its storage is deleted when the window closes), a different browser or device, an aggressive cleanup extension, or storage being full. Nothing here syncs, so there is no copy on a server to restore. If a note matters, export it as .txt or .md and keep the file somewhere you back up.
Is there still a daily limit on how many notes I can save?
No. The old version of this tool refused to save after five notes per day, which punished people for writing. That counter is gone completely: save as many notes as you like, as often as you like, and updating or deleting old notes is never restricted either. The only real ceiling is your browser's storage quota for this site, which is typically around 5 MB of text, and the page warns you if a write is ever refused.
Sources & further reading
- MDN — Window.localStorage — the storage mechanism behind this notepad: per origin, persists until cleared, and throws when storage is disabled or full.
- MDN — URL.createObjectURL() — how the export buttons turn a Blob of text into a downloadable file, and why the temporary URL must be released with revokeObjectURL().
- MDN — Window: beforeunload event — used to flush a pending autosave when the tab is closed or reloaded, so the last few keystrokes are not lost.