dedtxt

DeadText

A dead simple plain-text editor.

A bit like TextEdit or Notepad, but even simpler and with fewer features. No hidden text. No formatting. No settings to fiddle with. Just a textarea and your file. UTF-8 in, UTF-8 out.

Same code, every platform: macOS, Windows, Linux desktop apps; a PWA you can install from any browser; iOS and Android apps via Capacitor.

Run from source

Requires Node 20+.

npm install
npm start                 # Electron desktop
npm run serve:web         # Web build at http://127.0.0.1:5173

Project structure

main.js, preload.js       Electron main + preload
src/                      The app itself — shared by every platform
  index.html              Single textarea, no chrome
  renderer.js             Editor logic; talks only to platform/
  platform/
    index.js              Detects runtime, picks an implementation
    electron.js           IPC to main.js via window.dt
    web.js                File System Access API + download fallback
    capacitor.js          @capacitor/filesystem on iOS/Android
  sw.js                   Service worker for offline web
  manifest.webmanifest    PWA manifest
landing/                  Marketing/download page served at the root
android/                  Capacitor project (committed)
ios/                      Capacitor project (generated on demand — needs macOS)
build/                    Icon source + electron-builder resources
scripts/                  Build scripts (web, mobile, icons)

The renderer is platform-agnostic: it imports platform/index.js, which returns one of three modules with the same interface. Adding a new platform means writing a new module and teaching platform/index.js how to detect it.

Build desktop installers

npm run build:mac         # .dmg + .zip (x64 + arm64)
npm run build:win         # NSIS installer + portable .exe
npm run build:linux       # AppImage + .deb + .rpm

Outputs go to dist/. Each OS must build its own installers locally, except Linux, which can also be built from macOS. For full cross-platform builds, push to main or open a PR — the GitHub Actions workflow handles all three.

Build the web app

npm run build:web         # produces dist-web/
npm run serve:web         # serve dist-web/ at http://127.0.0.1:5173

dist-web/ is a static site — drop it on any web host. Layout:

Pushes to main redeploy the site to the gh-pages branch automatically via GitHub Actions; the site lives at https://cportka.github.io/deadtext/.

Build the mobile apps

iOS and Android use Capacitor to wrap the web build. The android/ project is committed. The ios/ project is generated on demand because scaffolding it requires macOS.

# one-time per checkout, macOS only
npm run cap:add:ios

# then, per build
npm run build:android     # produces dist-mobile/DeadText-debug.apk
npm run build:ios         # macOS only — produces dist-mobile/ios/App.app for the simulator

For local development, open the native projects in their IDEs:

npm run cap:open:ios      # opens Xcode
npm run cap:open:android  # opens Android Studio

CI builds an unsigned app-debug.apk and a simulator-only iOS .app on every push so you can sideload to test.

Icon

The app icon lives at build/icon.svg. Edit it, then run:

npm run gen:icons

That regenerates the .icns, .ico, .png, and PWA icon set from the SVG. The desktop and web build scripts run this automatically; you only need to invoke it manually if you want to inspect the output without a full build.

Keys

Action macOS Win/Linux
New Cmd + N Ctrl + N
Open Cmd + O Ctrl + O
Save Cmd + S Ctrl + S
Save As Cmd + Shift + S Ctrl + Shift + S
Close Cmd + W Ctrl + W
Quit Cmd + Q Ctrl + Q

Drop a file onto the window to open it. The OS “Open with…” menu lists DeadText for txt/md/log/json/csv/ini/yml/yaml/xml.

License

ISC. See LICENSE.

“because everything sucked for this sort of thing” — cportka

This site is open source. Improve this page.