Text Extractor — Read Text Files in Your Browser
This tool opens a plain text (.txt) file from your device and instantly displays its contents for review and copying — no editor, download round-trip, or upload involved. It is a quick way to peek into log files, exports, notes, or any text document, straight from the browser.
The file is read locally with the browser's File API and never leaves your machine, which makes the tool safe for logs and exports that contain private data. Support for extracting text from additional formats is planned.
How to use Text Extractor
- Click the file input and choose a .txt file from your device.
- The file's text appears immediately in the output panel.
- Press the copy button to copy the entire contents to your clipboard.
Supported files
Currently the tool reads plain text files (.txt). Files are decoded as UTF-8, the dominant text encoding on the web. Binary formats such as PDF and Word documents are not yet supported — choosing one shows an unsupported-type message rather than garbled output.
Related terminology
- Plain text
- A file containing only character data with no styling or embedded objects — the universal, future-proof document format.
- File API
- The browser capability that lets a web page read a file the user selects, entirely on the client.
- Character encoding
- The mapping between bytes and characters; UTF-8 is the standard this tool uses when reading files.
Frequently asked questions
- Is my file uploaded when I select it?
- No. The browser reads the file locally using the File API and displays the text — no network request is made and nothing is stored.
- Can I extract text from PDFs or Word documents?
- Not yet — the tool currently supports .txt files. Support for more formats is planned; selecting an unsupported file shows a clear message instead of failing silently.
- Why do some characters look wrong?
- Files are decoded as UTF-8. A file saved in a legacy encoding (such as Windows-1252) may show a few substituted characters; re-save it as UTF-8 for a clean read.