Online Notes: a free notepad that saves as you type

Take notes online without an account

OnlineNotes is a free online notepad for the things you need to write down right now: a phone number, meeting points, a draft message, a shopping list, a block of code you want to keep for a few minutes. Open the page and type. Nothing asks you to sign in, pick a plan or install an app.

It behaves like the plain notepad on your computer, with a few things added: several notes open at once, find and replace, word and character counts, and a live preview when you write in Markdown. It runs in any modern browser on a laptop, tablet or phone.

How to use these online notes

1. Click into the editor and start typing. There is nothing to install and no account to create.
2. Open a new tab for each topic, or press Alt+T. Your notes are listed in the sidebar and grouped by when you last worked on them: today, yesterday, this week, this month and older.
3. Close the page whenever you like. Your notes save as you type, so they are waiting when you open the same browser again.
4. Export a note when you want a copy outside the browser. You can download it as a TXT, Markdown, HTML or JSON file, or print it.

Where your notes are saved

Your notes are saved in your browser's local storage, on your own device. They are not uploaded to our servers, so we cannot read them. Our privacy policy explains what the site does measure: visits and page views, through Google Analytics, and never the text of your notes.

Local storage has limits you should know about. Your notes live in one browser on one device, so they do not follow you to your phone or to another browser. Clearing your browser data deletes them, and so does closing a private window. Browsers also cap local storage for each site, often at about 5 MB. Treat this notepad as a fast place to write, and export anything you cannot afford to lose.

When a notes app is the better choice

If you need notes on every device, shared notebooks or photo attachments, use an account-based app such as Google Keep, Apple Notes or Notion. OnlineNotes suits the opposite case: you want to write now, on a computer you already use, without creating another account or handing your text to a service. Many people use both, and export from here when a note is worth keeping for good.