Show HN: Minimalist editor that lives in browser, stores everything in the URL

138•medv•2h ago

I wanted to see how far I could go building a notes app using only what modern browsers already provide – no frameworks, no storage APIs, no build step.

What it does:

Single HTML file, no deps, 111 loc

Notes live in the URL hash (shareable links!)

Auto-compressed with CompressionStream

Plain-text editor (contenteditable)

History support

Page title from first # heading

Respects light/dark mode

No storage, cookies, or tracking

The entire app is the page source.

https://textarea.my/

Comments

nvahalik•2h ago

Love your other tools, btw!

medv•1h ago

Thanks!

deafpolygon•2h ago

Can you save anything?

thomascgalvin•2h ago

Not OP: sure, just bookmark it

tony_cannistra•2h ago

kinda -- but then you have to re-bookmark it every time you update it...

medv•1h ago

It also saves to localStorage

rorylawless•2h ago

https://textarea.my/#i0wtBgA=

sltkr•22m ago

No that should be: https://textarea.my/#c8yrLMnIzEsHAA==

samcollins•2h ago

Nice! I made a similar thing but the html for the text editor fits in a data uri, so it can be a bookmark or new tab page for taking quick notes

https://gist.github.com/smcllns/8b727361ce4cf55cbc017faaefbb...

qbane•2h ago

Just started making my own recently with CodeMirror 6 during holidays. No saving function for now: https://qbane.github.io/cgm

wwarren•2h ago

Amazing. The crime and punishment example crashed my iPhone’s Google Chrome when I tap the URL haha

mzelling•1h ago

Love it!

maxloh•1h ago

Per the spec [0], a URL can hold at least 8,000 characters.

> It is RECOMMENDED that all senders and recipients support, at a minimum, URIs with lengths of 8000 octets in protocol elements. Note that this implies some structures and on-wire representations (for example, the request line in HTTP/1.1) will necessarily be larger in some cases.

Mainstream browsers support at least 64,000 characters [1], and Chrome supports up to 2MB [2].

[0]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#section-4.1-5

[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/417184/

[2]: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/s...

medv•1h ago

Chrome limit is 2MB, Firefox is 1MB, WebKit is no limit.

Here is the Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky:

- https://medv.io/goto/crime-and-punishment-by-fyodor-dostoevs...

hallole•1h ago

LOL Tapping the address bar crashed my Chrome on mobile.

lurking_swe•16m ago

loaded OK for me on mobile safari.

maxloh•1h ago

For what it's worth, there might be a 2GB limit on iOS.

https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-corelibs-foundation/blob/...

scotty79•54m ago

Works fine on Win11 Edge

dspillett•1h ago

> Per the spec [0], a URL can hold at least 8,000 characters.

> It is RECOMMENDED that all senders and recipients support, at a minimum, URIs with lengths of 8000 octets in protocol elements.

It is always worth remembering that, unless you have already ensured that the content has been rendered into a URI-safe subset of ASCII, a character and an octet are not the same thing.

ghurtado•1h ago

Very good point indeed. In the worst case scenario, you would only have 1/5th of that capacity

berkes•36m ago

I guess the surveillance industry has enough incentives to make this ever larger, so they can fit more utm-trackers, campaign-ids, referal trackers and whatnot in URLs.

It's truly insane how large typical share-URLS for content on instagram, youtube or any other large platforms are. URLs that could've been example.com/t/some-large-enough-id?time=13337 are stuffed with hundreds of characters, just to gather more data on people using these links.

marcuskaz•1h ago

I have a similar one using localStorage https://github.com/mkaz/browser-pad

ctenb•1h ago

I made something similar once, specifically targetted for guitar tablature https://tabviewer.app/ To make links shorter for sharing with others, I use a shortlink service. Pasting URLs of thousands of characters long can be problematic

planb•41m ago

Wow funny I‘m just seeing this after posting my tab editor in another comment. I have the same use case as you :)

https://github.com/planbnet/guitartabs

xeonmc•1h ago

Can you make it monospace by default, so that this can be used as a code snippet bin?

adamschwartz•1h ago

Try https://a10z.co/note

medv•1h ago

Sure! textarea.my support custom style attr: https://textarea.my/#Ky4tSlVUyCotLlEoLUhJLElVKC6pzElVSCwpKWJ...

throwaway150•37m ago

How do you share after that? I can open devtools and change the attribute but the URL doesn't update after that.

edgars_xx•1h ago

love it, funny enough, I had similar idea pop into my head some weeks ago, just to be able to store quick notes and favorite them in my browser for later

medv•1h ago

In case you missed it: it is possible to style textarea via CSS and share it.

- https://textarea.my/#TYuxDcIwEEWpmeKUCiSIJQoKU0KFRBUWOGwnWDi...

growt•1h ago

I recently build a small framework to create JavaScript apps that use this kind of URL sharing and therefore don’t require a backend: https://github.com/grothkopp/lost.js

ThrowawayTestr•1h ago

https://textarea.my/#Cy4tsAcA

teach•1h ago

https://textarea.my/#Cy4tsOfi8ssvUcgtTc7QU_DIz0stLsmpVPBUSK0...

medv•1h ago

https://textarea.my/#ZY_NTgMhFIVd9ylYNZpMuQwDmZ9m4qM0SG9ncCg...

sublinear•1h ago

I like these kinds of projects, but adding a file export/import is inevitable. It's less about the limits of a URL and more about practicality.

I also have no way to confirm that URLs aren't logged server side, so I'd never trust the claim about "no tracking". That's why these projects also end up self-hosted.

denisinvader•1h ago

hash part of url only available in the browser, as far as I know, server doesn’t have access to # value

sublinear•1h ago

Typos and URL mangles are common though, and I'd still have no way to confirm if it got logged in that case. It's out of scope for anything in the github source, and instead depends on the server hosting the page. I know this isn't meant to be super secure, but it's still worth a mention.

throwaway150•32m ago

Typos aren't making the hash part turn into something else. Like your parent comment explained to you, the hash part is not sent to the server. If you go out of your way to mangle the URL then of course a mangled URL without hash will likely get logged to the server. But I'm not sure how one would manage to go so much out of the way that they mangle the URL in a way that removes the hash.

jamesdwilson•20m ago

very easy for the server to intentionally (or by compromise) add a one liner to send the hash text up.

billforsternz•1h ago

This is very interesting, very refreshing, very simple and clever, very well done, very everything good. Bravo and thank you.

desireco42•1h ago

The only thing missing is markdown and few themes. I think this is awesome idea for sharing. Love what you did with it.

jaysonelliot•1h ago

546,229 character-length URL for the Crime and Punishment example.

Half a megabyte for a URL. That certainly is a thing.

ljlolel•1h ago

I love this.

Now if you bootstrap the app code into the url too then you can have a minimal kernel to run any machine in url.

Then you can also make a Quine somehow.

nickweb•1h ago

Think you've inadvertently found a way to provide extra tests for mobile devices.

The Crime and Punishment one consistently crashes Brave mobile for me. I assume it's the length of the URL - and seen another commentator say the same for chrome mobile (sure they both use the same codebase so likely an upstream issue).

codazoda•1h ago

Nice! I love this.

I built Ponder in the same vein. It, however, has 10 files. I did not use the URL, did not have double the fun, and now I’m sad.

https://github.com/codazoda/ponder

pglevy•56m ago

Thanks for sharing! I tried a similar content-in-url approach for a family grocery list app but I couldn't get the url that short. (It worked but it was a bit cumbersome sharing over Whatsapp.) Will see what I can learn from this!

planb•54m ago

A few weeks ago I vibe coded a guitar tab editor just because I wanted to share a quick tab in a chat group with my band. When the first prototype already worked great, I just couldn’t stop to add features so that it now even has mouseover chord diagrams and copy and paste.

The sharing works just like here, by encoding the tab itself in the url.

https://github.com/planbnet/guitartabs

LordDragonfang•47m ago

It would be neat if ctrl+s offered to download the textarea to a .txt file.

roxolotl•47m ago

Was just working on something similar this morning. As an fyi you can avoid the string replacing in the base64 string by using `.toBase64({ alphabet: "base64url" })` and `fromBase64({ alphabet: "base64url"})`.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

huhtenberg•22m ago

In Firefox, https://textarea.my shows up as as a completely static non-actionable white page. Just white, with default cursor. No errors on the console.

levmiseri•21m ago

I really like this from a privacy point of view. So much so that I'm thinking about adding a purely URL-storage solution as an option in my https://kraa.io editor.

gnyman•14m ago

Funny how I made almost exactly the same but for maps.

I needed a way to share a link to a map, with drawings and the ability for the receiver to see their own location on the map.

Annotated screenshots solves the first but not the second.

Vibe engineered this, with many of the same ideas as OP.

Took an evening. Just in time apps for one specific use case is a thing.

And because it's so cheap to make and can be hosted cheaply with no backend, it can be given away for free.

https://nyman.re/mapdraw/#l=60.172108%2C24.941458&z=16&d=LU8...

surrTurr•14m ago

shameless plug: i built something very similar but nobody cared: https://github.com/AlexW00/Buffertab

WhyIsItAlwaysHN•14m ago

My own plug, translate between SQL dialects, state stored in URL so you can share it:

https://sqlscope.netlify.app/

reconnecting•12m ago

Are <head>, <body>, and </html> missing intentionally?

Safari 15.6.1: Unhandled Promise Rejection: ReferenceError: Can't find variable: CompressionStream

Show HN: Minimalist editor that lives in browser, stores everything in the URL

Spaced Repetition for Efficient Learning

Fabrice Bellard: Biography (2009) [pdf]

Show HN: Vibium – Browser automation for AI and humans, by Selenium's creator

Nvidia buying AI chip startup Groq for about $20B in cash

Qntm's Power Tower Toy

When Compilers Surprise You

Keystone (YC S25) is hiring engineer #1 to automate coding

Steam Store Is Offline

Build Your Own 100TB NAS in 2025: Complete TrueNAS Storage Guide

A faster path to container images in Bazel

My 2026 Open Social Web Predictions

Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

Beijing is enforcing tough rules to ensure chatbots don’t misbehave

The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

Quake's Player Speed (2017)

I'm returning my Framework 16

Avoid Mini-Frameworks

Researchers achieved 1,270 Wh/L in an anode-free lithium metal battery

Litex: Formal math for everyone – set theory examples with Lean comparison

Your inbox is a bandit problem

Making a game on a custom bytecode VM in 7 days and 3kB

Google's year in review: areas with research breakthroughs in 2025

Looking for Decent Conversation?

Lessons from the PG&E outage

Fabrication Techniques Using Myco-Materials

map::operator[] should be nodiscard

Games’ affordance of childlike wonder and reduced burnout risk in young adults

The Port I couldn't Ship

Unifi Travel Router

Show HN: Minimalist editor that lives in browser, stores everything in the URL

Spaced Repetition for Efficient Learning

Fabrice Bellard: Biography (2009) [pdf]

Show HN: Vibium – Browser automation for AI and humans, by Selenium's creator

Nvidia buying AI chip startup Groq for about $20B in cash

Qntm's Power Tower Toy

When Compilers Surprise You

Keystone (YC S25) is hiring engineer #1 to automate coding

Steam Store Is Offline

Build Your Own 100TB NAS in 2025: Complete TrueNAS Storage Guide

A faster path to container images in Bazel

My 2026 Open Social Web Predictions

Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

Beijing is enforcing tough rules to ensure chatbots don’t misbehave

The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

Quake's Player Speed (2017)

I'm returning my Framework 16

Avoid Mini-Frameworks

Researchers achieved 1,270 Wh/L in an anode-free lithium metal battery

Litex: Formal math for everyone – set theory examples with Lean comparison

Your inbox is a bandit problem

Making a game on a custom bytecode VM in 7 days and 3kB

Google's year in review: areas with research breakthroughs in 2025

Looking for Decent Conversation?

Lessons from the PG&E outage

Fabrication Techniques Using Myco-Materials

map::operator[] should be nodiscard

Games’ affordance of childlike wonder and reduced burnout risk in young adults

The Port I couldn't Ship

Unifi Travel Router

Show HN: Minimalist editor that lives in browser, stores everything in the URL

Comments