Text Editor
Free in-browser editor for text and code files
Free in-browser editor for text and code files
Last updated: 2026-07-10
Here are some common questions and answers about Text Editor. If you don't find what you need here, check the Help page or contact support.
Text Editor is a free web app for creating, opening, and editing text and code files on your computer and in Google Drive. It runs entirely in your browser (nothing to install) and is powered by the Ace editor, the same editing engine used by many developer tools.
Think of it as the missing text editor for Google Drive: like Google Docs, but for plain text and code files. It includes syntax highlighting for over 100 languages, autosave, draft recovery, version history for Drive files, live previews for Markdown, HTML, CSV/TSV, XML, JSON, SVG, LaTeX, and RTF, a plain-text reading view, find and replace, themes, Split view, and printing. You can use it at texteditor.co.
No. Text Editor runs entirely in your browser at texteditor.co. There's no app or extension to install, and no sign-up is required.
Yes. Text Editor is free to use, with no subscription, premium tier, or payment required. It's supported by a single banner ad. A Google sign-in is needed only if you want to work with files in Google Drive.
No, not for most things. You can create files, open files from your computer, edit them, preview Markdown, print, and save without signing in at all. A Google sign-in is needed only to open or save a file in Google Drive, so Text Editor can read and write the specific files you pick.
You can open a file from your computer or from Google Drive:
Recently opened files also appear under File > Open and on the start page, so you can jump back into a file with one click. To start fresh, use File > New (Ctrl/Cmd + N).
Text Editor opens plain-text and code files, including:
.md), and other plain text.Files that look binary (like images, PDFs, or executables) are detected up front and refused, so they can't be accidentally corrupted. If you really want to look inside one, choose Open as text anyway and it opens in a safe, view-only mode.
Text Editor includes syntax highlighting for more than 100 languages, from mainstream ones like JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Java, C++, C#, Go, Rust, and SQL to markup, data, and config formats like HTML, CSS, Markdown, JSON, XML, YAML, and TOML.
The language is detected automatically from the file extension. To change it, choose Format > Language mode, or click the language name in the status bar at the bottom of the editor - both open a searchable language picker. If you'd rather edit without any color-coding, turn off View > Highlight syntax for a plain-text experience.
Text Editor is powered by the Ace editor and includes the tools you'd expect from a desktop editor:
Your view settings, like wrap, line numbers, and font size, are remembered, and each document even restores its own cursor position, scroll position, and code folds when you reopen it.
Yes. When you open a Markdown file, Text Editor offers a live rendered preview. Use the Edit | Split | Preview control in the upper right (or View > Mode) to switch views. Split mode shows your Markdown source next to the rendered result, and the preview updates as you type.
The Format menu and toolbar add one-click Markdown formatting - bold, italic, headings, lists, quotes, and code blocks - so you can write Markdown without memorizing the syntax. See Can I format text? below.
Markdown isn't the only format with a live rendered preview. Text Editor can render:
Every preview is rendered behind a safety boundary - sanitized or fully isolated from the page - and the preview is view-only: editing always happens in the editor pane, so the preview can never change your file. For very large documents, live preview pauses above 1 MB to keep typing fast.
Yes. Choose Split from the Edit | Split | Preview control in the upper right to see your source on the left and the live rendered preview on the right - great for writing Markdown while watching the result take shape.
Keep preview in sync (on by default, under View > Mode) scrolls the two panes together, so the preview follows along as you move through the document. Split and Preview are available whenever the current file has a rendered preview; for other files the control simply stays in Edit mode.
Yes, in Markdown documents. The Format menu and the toolbar offer:
Because Markdown is plain text, these commands change the file's text directly - adding markup where appropriate, or transforming the selection - and the preview shows the rendered result. They work across multi-line selections too, so you can apply a command to several lines at once.
Press Ctrl/Cmd + F for a compact find bar that searches as you type and shows an "N of M" match counter, with next and previous buttons to step through matches.
Press Ctrl + H (Cmd + Shift + H on Mac) for the full Find and replace card, with Replace, Replace all, Previous, and Next, plus options for Match case, Match whole words, and regular expressions (so you can search for patterns, or replace with \n for a newline).
The card is non-modal and draggable: your document stays fully interactive while it's open, and you can move it out of the way of the text you're working on. See Find and replace in the Help page for more.
Press Ctrl/Cmd + S or use the Save button. A file in Text Editor lives in one home at a time - a file on your computer or a file in Google Drive - and Save writes back to that home. The save status in the app bar always tells you where things stand ("Saving...", then "Saved to Drive" or "Saved to Computer").
The File menu gives you full control over where your file lives, and shows the commands that fit where it lives right now:
With autosave on (the default), you rarely need to press Save at all. See Does Text Editor autosave my changes? below.
Yes. Autosave is on by default - you can toggle it under File > Autosave. A few seconds after you stop typing, Text Editor writes your changes back to the file's home:
The save status changes from "Saving..." to "Saved to Drive" or "Saved to Computer" so you can see when your latest changes have reached the file. And underneath autosave there's a second, independent safety net: the recovery draft. See What happens if my browser crashes? next.
Text Editor is designed to get your work back. As you type, it continuously mirrors your unsaved changes to a recovery draft in your browser's local storage (IndexedDB), separate from and in addition to autosave.
If the tab crashes, your browser restarts, your battery dies, or the network drops mid-save, your latest edits are restored when you come back, with a "Recovered unsaved changes" notice so you know what happened. Each browser tab keeps its own draft, so working in several tabs won't cause them to overwrite each other.
The recovery draft lives only on your device, is never sent anywhere, and is cleaned up once your changes are safely saved to their real home. Text Editor warns you if recovery storage is full or unavailable, or when a large file makes drafts slower or turns them off. And if you close a tab with unsaved changes on purpose, Text Editor asks first.
Yes. The start page shows a Recent files table with each file's name, location (your computer or Google Drive), date, and size. The same list appears under File > Open, so you can reopen a recent file without leaving the keyboard.
If you edited a file within the last week, the start page can also offer a "Pick up where you left off" card that reopens your most recently edited file with one click. Dismissing it hides that file's card until you edit it again.
The recents list is stored only in your browser on your device. You can remove everything at once with Clear recents.
Text Editor is built for Google Drive. Once you sign in:
If you open a Drive file you don't have permission to edit, it opens view-only - you can read, copy, and print it, and save your own editable copy. Files opened from a Gmail attachment work too: read them right away, then save to Drive or download.
Yes, for files in Google Drive. Choose File > Version history to see the file's revisions, newest first, with when each was saved and by whom. Select a version to preview it read-only in the editor - closing version history brings your current text back.
From there you can Download a version or Restore it. Restore is deliberately non-destructive: the older version is loaded into the editor as a draft you can review and save - or undo - so nothing is ever overwritten behind your back.
The versions come from Google Drive itself, which keeps recent revisions of non-Google files on a rolling basis (typically up to 30 days or 100 revisions). Every save from Text Editor participates in that history automatically.
Text Editor never silently overwrites anyone's work - that's a hard rule. Before writing to a Google Drive file or a local file with in-place access, it checks whether the file has changed since you last loaded it: maybe a collaborator edited the Drive file, you edited it on another device, or another program on your computer changed the local file.
If it has, saving pauses and you choose what happens next: save your version anyway, or use the other version - your text is backed up first, and that choice is undoable. And if you'd rather keep both, use Make a copy for a Drive file or Save as for a local file. Your unsaved work is protected the whole time by the local recovery draft.
See If the file changed somewhere else on the Help page for a walkthrough.
Yes, in Chromium browsers such as Chrome, Edge, and Opera. Text Editor uses the File System Access API, so a file you open from your computer can be saved back to that same file in place - no re-downloading, and autosave works too.
It's designed to be unsurprising about permissions: opening a file only ever asks for read access. The first time you save, your browser asks for write permission for that file - so nothing on your disk is ever written without an explicit yes from you. Until you grant it, the save status simply reads "Grant access to save."
Firefox and Safari don't support in-place saving, so there Text Editor uses a classic open dialog and saves by downloading a copy - a fully supported path, just with one extra step.
Text files written by older programs often use legacy encodings, which can show up as garbled characters. Text Editor handles this for you: files are decoded as UTF-8 first, UTF-16 files with a byte-order mark are recognized, and when a file isn't valid UTF-8, Text Editor auto-detects the likely encoding and offers to switch.
If a file still looks wrong, choose Tools > Encoding to reinterpret it manually. Alongside Autodetect and UTF-8 there are 16 legacy encodings, including Windows-1252 (Western European), Windows-1251 (Cyrillic), ISO-8859-2 and Windows-1250 (Central European), Shift JIS (Japanese), GB2312/GBK (Simplified Chinese), Big5 (Traditional Chinese), EUC-KR (Korean), TIS-620 (Thai), IBM866 (Cyrillic CP866), and Windows code pages for Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic, Baltic, and Vietnamese.
Files are always saved as UTF-8, the modern standard that represents every language. When a legacy-encoded file is saved, Text Editor tells you about the conversion the first time, so there are no silent changes. See Encoding in the Help page for more.
Text Editor scales down gracefully instead of freezing or failing on big files:
Text Editor always tells you which of these applies, with a banner or a confirmation before a very large file opens - no surprises. Actual limits also depend on how much memory your browser gives each tab.
Yes, on two levels. The app theme can be System, Light, or Dark - System follows your operating system automatically. The editor theme controls the colors of the text you're editing, with a curated set of 18:
Choose View > Theme to open the theme chooser - themes preview live as you browse, and Cancel puts everything back the way it was. You can also click the theme name in the status bar.
There's a font choice too: the editor font can be the system monospace default, Roboto Mono, JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, Courier New, or Consolas, with adjustable size. All fonts are served locally from texteditor.co - no third-party font services.
Text Editor is built for the keyboard. On Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS use Ctrl; on macOS use Cmd. Press Ctrl/Cmd + / at any time (or choose Help > Keyboard shortcuts) to open a searchable shortcut reference covering every command.
There's also a command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + P) that lets you search and run any command by name, with your recently used commands at the top.
Yes. If your fingers are trained on another editor, choose Tools > Keyboard mode and pick Vim, Emacs, Sublime, or VS Code - or stay with Standard. Your choice is remembered across visits, and the current mode shows in the status bar - click it to open the keyboard-mode chooser.
Yes. Choose File > Print or press Ctrl/Cmd + P. The print dialog offers:
Printing always comes out black-on-white for readability, even if you're editing in dark mode, and the whole document prints - not just the part on screen.
Not at this time. Text Editor is optimized for exact, faithful editing of text and code files, where an aggressive spell checker tends to do more harm than good (imagine autocorrect in a config file). Code files do get syntax checking, which flags errors as you type. For prose, we recommend drafting here and running a spelling pass in your favorite word processor if you need one.
Not in real time - Text Editor is a single-editor app, not a multiplayer one. It is, however, built for safe sharing through Google Drive:
You need a connection to load the app. Once it's loaded, though, editing keeps working if your connection drops: recovery drafts continue saving on your device, and files opened from your computer can still be saved locally. Saving to Google Drive pauses while you're offline - keep the tab open, and when the connection returns autosave picks up where it left off (or just press Save).
The save status is always honest about where your changes are - it won't claim "Saved to Drive" while you're offline.
Text Editor works in current versions of Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, and Safari. One difference to know about: saving in place to files on your computer requires a Chromium browser (Chrome, Edge, or Opera). Firefox and Safari use a download-a-copy fallback instead - see Can Text Editor save directly to files on my computer?. Keeping your browser up to date gives the best experience.
After you add Text Editor from the Google Workspace Marketplace, it appears in Google Drive's Open with menu for supported files, so you can open a file in the editor right from Drive. See the Install page for details.
To remove Text Editor from your Google account later:
Your Google account itself isn't affected, and any files you created or saved with Text Editor stay right where they are in your Drive.
Yes. Text Editor uses Google Sign-In, so you can use it with any Google account you're signed in to. If you open a Drive file that belongs to a different account than the one you're signed in with, Text Editor prompts you to switch so the file opens under the right account.
To switch manually, use the account control in the upper-right corner of the app.
If you only use Text Editor with files from your computer, no Google permissions are required.
To work with Google Drive, you sign in with Google and Text Editor requests these scopes:
openid, email, profile: Basic Google sign-in, so Text Editor can confirm which account you are using and show who is signed in.drive.file: Lets Text Editor read and write only the specific files you open or create with it - never your whole Drive. Text Editor cannot see any other files in your Drive.drive.install: Only lets Google offer Text Editor as a choice for opening supported files (for example, in Google Drive's "Open with" menu). It does not grant access to any of your files.For more on these scopes, see Google's documentation on Google Drive API Scopes.
No. Text Editor is private by design. Your files are opened, edited, and saved entirely in your browser. There is no backend server that reads, processes, or stores your file contents.
Recovery drafts and the recent files list live in your browser's storage on your own device. When you work with Google Drive, your file moves directly between your browser and Drive over Google's official APIs, with the permissions you grant - it never passes through a server we control. Analytics never includes file contents or filenames.
Even the editor's building blocks respect this: the editor's libraries and fonts are served from texteditor.co itself rather than from third-party CDNs.
No. Text Editor does not store, log, or share your email address.
When you sign in with Google to work with Drive files, Text Editor receives your name and email from Google for that browser session only, to confirm you're using the right Google account and to display who is signed in.
We don't keep a mailing list and won't contact you unless you contact us first.
Both are linked in the footer of every page. You can also go directly to the Privacy Policy or the Terms of Service.
If something isn't working, these steps resolve most issues:
For specific error messages, see the Help page. If problems persist, email support@texteditor.co with a description of what's happening.
Text Editor is a product of Visware LLC, the team behind ZIP Extractor, a free web app for opening and creating ZIP files that has served Google Drive users for over a decade. Text Editor is built on the same privacy-first, in-browser foundation.
Yes. Reach out via the Text Editor Support page and we'll respond by email.