TXT File Viewer & Text Reader

Open any text file in your browser - from a short note to a 500 MB log - with automatic encoding detection, fast search and go to line. Logs get coloured levels (use the Log File Viewer for deep analysis), tables open better in the CSV Viewer, and notes with formatting in the Markdown Viewer. ASCII art in .nfo and .diz files looks right in the NFO Viewer, and binary files open in the Hex Viewer.

or paste text
Ctrl + Enter to view · Ctrl + V anywhere
Try a sample
Huge files Any encoding No upload
Related Tools
Log File Viewer CSV Viewer Markdown Viewer JSON Viewer Case Converter

How to open a TXT file online

  1. Open your text. Drop a .txt, .log, .nfo or any other text file anywhere on the page, browse for it, paste text, or try a sample.
  2. Read it your way. Change the font and size, wrap long lines, show tabs and hidden characters, or switch to Reading or NFO mode. The encoding is detected for you and can be changed.
  3. Find anything. Search with match case, whole word or regex, jump to any line with Ctrl + G, and filter the view down to matching lines or log levels.
  4. Copy, edit or download. Copy all the text, print it, make quick edits, or download it as UTF-8 with Windows or Unix line endings.

Keyboard shortcuts

  • SearchCtrl + F
  • Next / previous matchEnter / Shift + Enter, F3
  • Go to lineCtrl + G
  • Word wrap on / offAlt + Z
  • DownloadCtrl + S
  • Open a fileCtrl + O
  • PrintCtrl + P
  • Top / bottom of the fileCtrl + Home / End

Text viewer features

Built for huge files

Lines are indexed in the background and only the visible ones are drawn, so million-line logs scroll like a short note.

Smart encoding detection

UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 with or without BOM, plus Windows, ISO, KOI8, Shift_JIS, GBK, Big5 and EUC-KR code pages.

Search that keeps up

Match case, whole word and regex across the whole file, with every hit highlighted and a filter for matching lines.

See the invisible

Show spaces, tabs, line endings, no-break spaces, zero-width characters and stray control codes.

Reading and NFO modes

A calm book-like column for stories and notes, and true DOS fonts for NFO files and ASCII art.

Log friendly

ERROR, WARN, INFO and DEBUG lines get colours, timestamps stand out and one click shows only the errors.

Real statistics

Lines, words, characters with and without spaces, paragraphs, the longest line and reading time.

100% private

Your file is read by your browser and never uploaded. Close the tab and it is gone.

How to view large text files

Notepad and most online viewers try to load the whole file at once.

With a 300 MB log that means a frozen window - or a crashed tab.

This viewer reads the file in 16 MB slices and builds an index of where every line starts. It then draws only the 40 or so lines you can see, fetching more as you scroll.

Searching, word counting and downloads run in background workers, so the page stays responsive while they work through the file.

In our tests a 100 MB log with 1.7 million lines opened in under 2 seconds, and a 500 MB file with 5 million lines in about 4 seconds.

  • Jump anywhere - press Ctrl + G and type a line number, even line 4,000,000.
  • Very long lines - minified files with one giant line show the first 100,000 characters; Copy all and Download keep everything.
  • Limits - up to 4 GB per file. Editing and Copy all are kept for smaller files (5 MB and 50 MB) so your browser does not run out of memory.

Garbled text? Fix the encoding

Every text file is just bytes. The encoding is the key that turns those bytes into letters.

When the key is wrong, you get the famous mojibake. The table shows what it usually means.

You seeShould readWhat happened
café, naïvecafé, naïveA UTF-8 file opened as Windows-1252. Pick UTF-8.
caf�caféA Windows-1252 or ISO-8859 file opened as UTF-8. Pick Windows-1252.
ÏðèâåòПриветA Cyrillic Windows-1251 file opened as Western. Pick Windows-1251.
þarã, Polsk¹ţară, PolskąA Central European file (Romanian, Polish, Czech) read as Western. Pick Windows-1250.
ÛÛÛ²²±±°°███▓▓▒▒░░A DOS NFO opened as Western. Pick IBM437 or NFO mode.
H e l l oHelloA UTF-16 file without a byte order mark. Pick UTF-16 LE.

The viewer usually gets it right on its own, and offers its next best guesses as one-click buttons. Once the text looks right, download it as UTF-8 and every modern app will read it correctly.

Need to clean up the text itself - UPPERCASE, Title Case or sentence case? Paste it into the Case Converter.

Text files and the right viewer

Plenty of formats are plain text underneath, and this viewer opens all of them as they are.

Some deserve a dedicated view, and the viewer will suggest it when it recognises one:

Dropped a binary file by mistake? The viewer checks the first bytes and tells you what it really is - a PDF goes to the PDF Viewer, a Word file to the DOCX Viewer, an archive to the ZIP Viewer.

About TXT files

A TXT file is the simplest document there is: plain characters with no fonts, colours or images.

That is exactly why it lasts. A text file written in 1985 still opens today, on any device.

TXT files hold READMEs, notes, licences, exported chats, server logs and settings. Windows writes them with CRLF line endings, while Linux and macOS use LF - this viewer shows which one a file uses and converts between them.

When to use an online text viewer

  • A file too big for Notepad - logs and data dumps of hundreds of megabytes.
  • Locked-down devices - Chromebooks, tablets and work PCs where you cannot install an editor.
  • Old or foreign files - Cyrillic, Central European, Japanese or Chinese text that shows up as gibberish.
  • Hidden troublemakers - find the zero-width space or tab that breaks a config file.
  • Quick fixes - correct a typo, convert to UTF-8 and download, all in one place.

Browse all file viewers for documents, images and archives.

Frequently Asked Questions

Drop the .txt file onto this page, click to browse, or paste the text. It opens instantly with line numbers, search and statistics.

It works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebooks and phones, with nothing to install.

Yes. The file is read in slices and only the lines on your screen are drawn, so a 500 MB file with millions of lines opens in seconds and scrolls smoothly.

Search, go to line and downloads work on the whole file. The practical limit is 4 GB.

The file was saved in a different encoding than the one used to open it. The viewer detects UTF-8, UTF-16 and more than 30 older code pages automatically, and you can switch the encoding by hand if letters still look wrong.

Download it as UTF-8 to fix the file for good.

No. The file is read by your own browser and never leaves your device, which makes the viewer safe for logs, configs and private notes.

Recent files are only remembered if you switch that option on, and then only in this browser.

Yes, files up to 5 MB. Press Edit, make your changes, then Download - the file keeps its name.

You can also save it as UTF-8, UTF-8 with BOM or UTF-16 and switch line endings between Windows (CRLF) and Unix (LF).

Any plain text file: .txt, .log, .csv, .tsv, .ini, .cfg, .conf, .nfo, .diz, .md, .json, .xml, .yaml, .srt, .sql, .bat, .ps1, .sh and files with no extension at all.

If you drop a PDF, Word document, ZIP or image by mistake, the viewer says what it is and points you to the right tool, like the PDF Viewer or ZIP Viewer.

Press Ctrl + F and type. Turn on Match case, Whole word or regular expressions, jump between matches with Enter, and use the filter button to show only the matching lines.

Log files also get coloured ERROR, WARN and INFO levels with a level filter. For charts and time ranges, open the log in the Log File Viewer.

Open the .nfo or .diz file and the viewer switches to NFO mode by itself: the IBM437 code page, a block-friendly font and tight lines, so boxes and shaded logos look the way the artist drew them.

You can turn NFO mode on for any file under Options. Want to make your own? Try Image to ASCII.

Guides & Tutorials

All 14 guides
Guide How to Tell What Format an Image File Is (5 Easy Ways) Read the guide Guide How to Open ZIP, RAR, 7Z & TAR.GZ Files Online (Without Installing Anything) Read the guide Comparison PNG vs JPG: Which Image Format Should You Actually Use? Read the guide