Text File Generator
I don't know why this still takes as many steps as it does. Right click, New, Text Document, wait for it to appear, rename it (or don't, and end up with a folder full of "New Text Document (7).txt"), double click to open it, and only then can you actually type something. On a Mac it's a bit faster with TextEdit, but you still have to open the app, switch it to plain text mode if you haven't already, and save it somewhere.
If you just need a quick .txt file and don't want to go through all that, there's a simpler route: do it in the browser tab you already have open.
The browser can build the file for you
This isn't some trick or workaround. It's a normal thing browsers can do. You type your text into a box on a web page, click a download button, and the browser packages that text into a real .txt file and saves it to your downloads folder. No desktop app opens at any point.
Under the hood it's using something called the Blob API, which just means the browser can build a file in memory and hand it straight to you. Nothing gets sent to a server first. Your text stays on your computer the entire time. The "download" is really just your browser writing a file to your own disk.
Doing it step by step
- Open the text file generator.
- Type or paste in whatever you need to save.
- Change the filename if you want to, or don't bother, we'll tack on ".txt" automatically if you forget it.
- Click "Download TXT" and it's in your downloads folder.
A couple of things worth knowing
Your draft is quietly saved to your browser's local storage as you type, so if you accidentally close the tab or your laptop restarts, reopening the page brings your text back. That save is local only. It's there so you don't lose work, not so we can see what you wrote. We genuinely can't, nothing you type is sent anywhere.
If you're making more than one file, that's fine too. Download one, clear the box (there's a confirmation so you don't lose anything by accident), and start the next. There's nothing to reset or reload.
When this is actually worth it
If you're already sitting in VS Code or have Notepad pinned to your taskbar, this probably won't save you much. But there are plenty of situations where it does: you're on a public or borrowed computer, you're using a Chromebook or tablet that doesn't have a proper text editor installed, or you just don't want to dig through a file manager for a file you'll use once and forget about. In those cases, typing into a web page and clicking download is genuinely the fastest way to get a real .txt file on your device.
Quick questions people ask
Once the page has loaded, yes. Typing, downloading, and autosaving are all handled by your browser locally, none of it needs a live connection. You'd only need internet the first time, to load the page itself.
Not a hard one we've set. You're really only limited by your browser's memory, which in practice means you could paste in a genuinely huge document and it would still work fine. For a quick note or a config file, you won't come close to any limit.
Sure, once it's a .txt file on your computer, it's a completely normal file. Open it in Notepad, TextEdit, VS Code, or whatever you like and edit it the same as any other text file.
Give it a try
Write your text and download it as a .txt in a few seconds, nothing to install.
Open the tool