Pick one from the list, start a new one, or drop a Markdown, Word or PDF file anywhere on this page to bring it in.
Somewhere to think, plan and draft, with the editing you would expect from a word processor and none of the sign-up. Notes are written to your browser’s own storage. Want them on another device? Switch syncing on and they are encrypted before they leave — we store scrambled bytes and cannot read a word.
Any font at any size on any run of text, colour and highlight from a full picker, headings, lists, checklists, quotes, code, tables, footnotes, callout boxes, collapsible sections and a format painter. Find and replace with match‑case and whole‑word. Paste from anywhere and the structure survives while the source’s styling is stripped, so a note never arrives wearing somebody else’s font.
Group notes into notebooks, tag them across those groups, star the ones you keep coming back to and pin the one you are living in this week. Search reads titles, body text and tags together and narrows the list as you type — there is no index to wait for, because everything is already on this device.
Font, text size, line height, page width and paper — plain, cream, ruled, grid or dotted — are all yours to set, and every note keeps its own. Focus mode hides everything but the words; typewriter mode holds the line you are writing near the middle of the screen so your eyes stop travelling down the page.
Notebooks and tags on the left, your notes in the middle, the page you are writing on the right. It is the shape every notes app settles on, without the setup wizard in front of it.
Typography is not a global setting here. Change the font while a note is open and it changes that note, because that is what you meant. Making it the default for new notes is a separate button.
While you edit, a snapshot is written every few minutes and the last thirty are kept for each note. Pick one from the list, read it beside what you have now, and restore it if it was better.
There is no second theme setting to keep in sync. The light and dark control in the site header sets this workspace too, and every note, dialogue and panel follows it.
This is the part most note apps explain last. It is the first thing you should know, because it decides everything else about the tool.
Notes are written to IndexedDB, a database your browser keeps for this site on this machine. Nothing is uploaded when you type, when you save, or even when you export — the Word and PDF writers are libraries that run in the tab. Used this way the Notebook needs no account and makes no network request with your writing in it at all.
The catch is honest and worth saying out loud: clearing site data deletes your notes, and so does a fresh browser profile or a machine you no longer have. That is why Backup exists, and why the next box exists.
Switch syncing on and your notes are saved to your account so they survive a wiped browser and appear on your other devices. Each note is encrypted on your device with AES‑256‑GCM, under a key built from your account password by PBKDF2 with 310,000 rounds. Your password never leaves your device, and neither does the key.
What we store is a blob of scrambled bytes, an id, a revision number and a timestamp. No title, no tags, no word count. We cannot read your notes, cannot hand them to anyone who asks, and cannot recover them if you forget your password — which is the same trade Proton and Standard Notes make, and the reason the guarantee is worth anything.
Every notes service that syncs can read what you wrote. This one is built so that it cannot — and the difference is arithmetic, not a policy you have to take on trust.
When you press save, the note is encrypted in your browser with AES‑256‑GCM. The key is built on your device from your account password using PBKDF2 with 310,000 rounds and a salt unique to you. Your password is not sent to us to do this — the maths happens on your machine.
What sits on our disk is a blob of ciphertext, a note id, a revision number and a timestamp. Not the title. Not the tags. Not the length of what you wrote. If our database were stolen tomorrow, the thief would have the same nothing we have.
Sign in on your phone, enter the same password, and the notes decrypt there. Nowhere in between can read them — not us, not the hosting company, not anyone handed a copy of the disk. Unlock once per device; after that it just works.
| What it costs | No account | Free account | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| The whole editor | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Notes kept in this browser | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Export, import and backup | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Encrypted syncing | — | 50 notes | Every note |
Go past the free 50 and nothing breaks: the extra notes stay in your browser and go up on their own the moment there is room, or the moment you upgrade. Nothing is deleted and nothing is held hostage.
| The honest trade | What it means |
|---|---|
| Forget your password | Your synced notes cannot be recovered by anyone, including us. There is no reset, because we hold no key. The copies in your browser are unaffected. |
| Change your password | The key changes with it, so notes already synced can no longer be read. Turn syncing off and on again from the notebook and the copies in your browser go back up under the new key. |
| Search across devices | Search runs on your own machine over the notes it has decrypted. We cannot search for you, because we cannot read anything. |
| Sharing a note with someone | Not possible. Sharing would mean giving somebody else a key, and the design has nowhere to put one. |
Everything below is free, works without an account, and has no daily limit — because none of it costs us anything to run.
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Rich text editor | Headings 1–4, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, superscript and subscript, bullet and numbered lists, checklists, quotes, code blocks, dividers, links, tables, images, alignment and indenting. |
| Typography on any selection | Ten font families and twelve sizes applied to the words you highlighted, not just the whole note. Letter spacing, line spacing, paragraph spacing, and case conversion including sentence case. |
| Colour, properly | Twenty text presets and twelve highlighter shades, a colour wheel, a hex field, and swatches of the colours you used recently. Four coloured callout boxes for the sentence that matters. |
| Format painter | Copy the look of one passage — font, size, weight, colour, spacing — and paint it onto another. |
| Find and replace | Every match highlighted in the note itself, stepped through one at a time, with match‑case and whole‑word, and replace‑all. |
| Full table editing | Insert and delete rows and columns, merge and split cells, toggle a header row, and set column widths. |
| Footnotes | A numbered marker in the text and a list at the bottom, renumbered automatically — delete a marker and its note goes with it. |
| Collapsible sections and page breaks | Fold a long passage away behind a heading; drop a page break that takes effect when you print or export a PDF. Six divider styles. |
| Comments | A note to yourself attached to a passage, highlighted in the editor and stripped from every file you export. |
| Markdown shortcuts and smart punctuation | Type ## for a heading, - for a list, > for a quote. Straight quotes curl, two hyphens become an em dash, three dots become an ellipsis. Both can be switched off. |
| Symbols and emoji | A picker with the punctuation, arrows, maths and currency signs that are awkward to type, plus the emoji people actually use. |
| Word goals and due dates | Set a target and a ring fills as you write. Give a note a due date and it is labelled in the list, and marked when it is overdue. |
| Autosave | Saves a moment after you stop typing, and again if the tab goes into the background. There is no save button to forget. |
| Version history | A snapshot every few minutes while you edit, up to thirty per note. Preview any of them side by side with the current text before restoring. |
| Notebooks and tags | One notebook per note, any number of tags. Colour labels for notebooks and for individual notes. |
| Search, sort and filter | Instant search over titles, body text and tags; sort by last edited, date created or title; starred and pinned notes rise to the top. |
| Trash with restore | Deleting is a two-step. Notes wait in the trash until you empty it, and clear themselves after thirty days. |
| Templates | Meeting notes, article draft, daily journal, research notes and a plain to-do list — or start blank. |
| Per-note typography | Font, size, line height, page width and paper style, remembered per note, with “make this the default” for new ones. |
| Focus and typewriter modes | Hide everything but the page; keep the current line near the middle of the screen. |
| Outline panel | Every heading in the note as a jump list, which doubles as a check that the document has a shape. |
| Split view | Read one note beside the one you are writing — notes from an interview next to the piece you are drafting from them. |
| Word count and readability | Words, characters and reading time under every note; speaking time, paragraph count and a Flesch reading-ease score in the statistics panel. |
| Export | Markdown, plain text, a standalone web page, Word .docx, PDF, and print — all built in the browser. |
| Import | Drop or choose .md, .txt, .html, .docx and .pdf files. Word documents are converted with mammoth.js; PDFs have their text extracted. |
| Backup and restore | One JSON file containing every note, notebook and preference, restorable into any browser. |
| Encrypted syncing (optional) | Save notes to your account, encrypted on your device first, and pick them up on another. 50 notes free, unlimited on Pro. Off unless you switch it on. |
| Command palette | Ctrl + K reaches every command by name, plus shortcuts for the things you do constantly. |
| Works offline | Once the page has loaded, writing, searching and exporting to text formats need no connection. |
A browser notebook is the right answer for some people and the wrong one for others. Here is the honest split.
A university library computer will not let you install anything and should not hold your account. This opens in a tab, keeps your notes on that machine only, and exports to Word when the essay is due. Take the backup file with you on a USB stick or your own cloud drive.
Case notes, a grievance letter, medical history, an interview with a source, the first furious draft of a resignation. Things you want written down and do not want stored on a company’s servers. Nothing here is uploaded, so there is nothing to be breached, subpoenaed or trained on.
No onboarding, no workspace to name, no invitation to your team. You open the page and there is a cursor. If you have ever opened a notes app and closed it again before finding the “new note” button, this is built against that.
There is no sharing, no comments and no permissions. Two people cannot be in a note at once, and there is no link to send. If several people need the same document, use something with a server behind it — that is what servers are for.
If you sync, the password is the key. Lose it and those notes are unrecoverable — there is no reset, because we never had anything to reset with. If that makes you uneasy, leave syncing off and use Backup files, which stay readable whatever happens to your memory.
Browser storage is durable but not guaranteed, and syncing depends on an account and a password. Neither is a substitute for a file you hold. A decade of journals deserves a Backup file in your own cloud drive as well — that is true here and it is true of every notes app.
All three of these are good tools. They are answering a different question.
| This notebook | Google Keep / Notion / Evernote | A desktop app such as Obsidian | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account needed | No | Yes | No |
| Where notes are stored | Your browser — plus, if you choose, encrypted on ours | The company’s servers, readable by them | Files on your disk |
| Sync between devices | Yes, end‑to‑end encrypted | Yes, automatically | By your own sync, or a paid add-on |
| Sharing and collaboration | No | Yes | Limited |
| Install needed | No | No, but an account is | Yes |
| Works on a locked-down work laptop | Yes | Usually | Often not |
| Cost | Free, no limits | Free tier with limits, then paid | Free, some paid extras |
| Who can read your notes | Only you — we hold no key | You, and the provider under its policy | Only you |
| If you forget your password | Synced notes are unrecoverable | Reset it and carry on | Not applicable |
Short version: if you need to share notes with other people, use an account‑based app. If you want your notes on your devices without a company being able to read them, this is that — and the password you would use to reset your way back in is the one thing we deliberately cannot help you with.
Ctrl + K opens the command palette, which can reach every feature by typing part of its name — export, history, templates, focus mode, all of it. Ctrl + Alt + N starts a note from anywhere. Those two carry the whole tool; the full list is under the question mark in the toolbar.
A note belongs to one notebook and that is usually a subject: Dissertation, Client work, House. Tags cut across those and usually describe state or kind: draft, waiting, reference, idea. Splitting it that way stops the sidebar turning into a second inbox.
Open the outline panel on anything longer than a page. Headings that read like a sensible table of contents mean the piece has a structure; a list of vague fragments means it does not yet, and that is worth knowing before you have written three thousand words.
Once a week, or at the end of any long session, press Backup and put the file in whatever cloud drive you already use. It is a few seconds and it converts the one real weakness of a browser-stored notebook into a non-issue.
In your own browser by default, in a database called IndexedDB that belongs to this site on this device. Nothing is uploaded unless you switch syncing on. If you do, each note is encrypted on your device with AES‑256‑GCM under a key made from your account password, and only the scrambled result reaches us. We hold no key, so we cannot read your notes — and neither could anyone who stole our database.
No. The whole editor works with no account at all, and there is no limit on how many notes you keep in this browser. An account is needed only if you want your notes saved to it and waiting on another device.
Yes, if you switch syncing on. Sign in on the other device, enter the same account password, and your notes are there. They travel encrypted and are unscrambled only on your own devices. Free accounts sync 50 notes; Pro syncs every note. Leave syncing off and everything stays in one browser, which is still a perfectly good way to use this.
Your synced notes cannot be recovered. Not by support, not by us. The key that decrypts them is built from your password on your own device and never reaches our servers, so there is nothing on our side to unlock them with. That is the price of notes nobody else can read, and the setup screen says so plainly before you switch syncing on. The copies in your browser are unaffected, and a Backup file is always readable — which is why keeping one is worth the ten seconds.
Free accounts sync 50 notes. Pro syncs everything. Notes past the free allowance are never lost or blocked — they stay in your browser and go up on their own the moment there is room, or the moment you upgrade. Everything else here is free on every plan, including with no account at all.
Yes — Markdown, plain text, a standalone web page, Word .docx, PDF, and print. The Word and PDF writers are libraries that run in your browser, so even exporting sends nothing anywhere. For scripts the PDF library cannot draw, such as Arabic or Urdu, the tool opens the print dialogue instead so your browser’s own fonts do the work.
Drop them onto the page, or use Import. Markdown, plain text and HTML come in with their structure intact; Word .docx files are converted by mammoth.js and PDFs have their text extracted. A PDF is a layout format rather than a document format, so expect the text but not the design.
Word count, character count and reading time sit under every note as you type. The statistics panel adds speaking time, paragraph count and a Flesch reading-ease score for English — which counts syllables by a rule of thumb, so treat it as a nudge rather than a measurement. Our word counter goes further if you need keyword density and grade levels.
Deleting moves it to the trash, where it stays until you empty it, and clears itself after thirty days. Separately, every note keeps a version history: a snapshot every few minutes while you edit, with the last thirty kept, so you can recover a paragraph you cut half an hour ago.
No. It is a writing tool, not a generator, and no part of it sends your text to a model. Our other tools do use AI and say so; this one deliberately does not, which is why it has no limits and no cost. If you want AI on something you wrote here, export it and paste it into the paraphraser or the summariser — a deliberate step rather than a silent one.
Those are accounts with servers behind them, and that buys real things: sync, sharing, and a company backing up your data. This buys the opposite trade — nothing to sign up for, nothing stored on anyone else’s machine, and it opens in a second. If you need your notes on three devices and shared with a team, use one of them.
Once the page has loaded, yes. Writing, searching, organising and exporting to Markdown, text or HTML all keep working with no connection. Word and PDF export fetch a library the first time you use them, so do that once while online. Loading the page from a cold start still needs the internet.
Your browser decides, and it is usually generous — typically a share of free disk space running to hundreds of megabytes or more. Text is tiny, so the practical limit is images, which is why pasted images are capped at 2 MB each. The Backup dialogue shows what this site is currently using and what your browser allows.
Yes, and per note. Font, text size, line height, page width and paper style live in Look and feel, and each note remembers its own — so a wide monospace scratchpad can sit next to a narrow serif essay. “Make this the default” applies the current note’s settings to new ones.
Write it here, then send it wherever it needs to go next.
Text you paste into the AI tools is covered by our privacy policy, and what each plan includes is on the pricing page. The Notebook needs neither — it is free on every plan, including without an account.
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