Stashpad launches Google Docs alternative you can use without any login

https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/13/dev-focused-note-taking-startup-stashpad-launches-google-docs-alternative-you-can-use-without-any-login/

by yuvalhazaz • 2 years ago

130 68 2 years ago

techcrunch.com

thorncorona2• 2 years ago

what is the point of this?

you can’t store any important info if there’s no login unless your links contain the key.

and at that point you might as well just use a login instead maintaining your own list of docs

geek_at• 2 years ago

agreed, would be nice als selfhostable service though

inhumantsar• 2 years ago

The product is browser first and document history is stored locally, so users can search for docs without querying the server. The company said that while there is no offline support at the moment, it is a feature that the startup will introduce in the future. > You can easily share these docs for others to look at and collaborate with. However, some of the features like read-only sharing are behind a login.

it took you longer to write that comment than it would've taken to get the answer.

thorncorona2• 2 years ago

i see no reason to use this product over gsuite when it’s both cheaper, has more functionality, and a data/privacy policy

omoikane• 2 years ago

Access control appears to be a paid feature:

https://www.stashpad.com/pricing

Using the free version for anything sensitive might not be a good idea, especially since I can't find anything about their retention policy or something like terms of service.

ryandrake2• 2 years ago

The lack of needing an account is a (or the) key feature: one I wish more online services copied. How much better and more frictionless would the web be if we weren’t having to log into an account everywhere we went?

warkdarrior• 2 years ago

How do I get back to my docs from a second device?

ilikehurdles• 2 years ago

There once was an incredibly nice product like this called hackpad. It even had a similar theme IIRC. It was a yc company, lovely polished product, and the folks I was founding a startup with loved it with zero effort spent on convincing them.

10 years ago Dropbox bought it and shut it down.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=hackpad

rigid• 2 years ago

I loved etherpad but it was a pain to host back then.

I'd love to have something similar that's lightweight and not serverside node.js

aedocw• 2 years ago

Take a look at https://github.com/ekzhang/rustpad

Shank• 2 years ago

Hackpad still quasi-exists as Dropbox Paper, but it's definitely not the same. I really like this product because it reminds me a lot of Hackpad!

unspecified• 2 years ago

I just got hedgedoc (nee codimd, nee hackmd [1]) setup for my own purposes. It does have the advantage of splitscreen edit/preview, and it has the option to use vim/emacs keybinds in the editor, but if I'd had stashpad, I probably would not have bothered setting up a selfhost hedgedoc.

[1] https://hedgedoc.org/history/

rapnie• 2 years ago

+1 for hedgedoc. Only weird thing missing is an admin interface and easy way to check if no one is abusing any of those forgotten public pads that are hanging about.

ilrwbwrkhv2• 2 years ago

The real secret we need to know here is how to convince TechCrunch to write about you when you have the most generic product on the planet. Knowing journalists is the secret?

turnsout• 2 years ago

If it makes you feel any better, news articles make almost no impact on a product’s revenue or success.

ilrwbwrkhv2• 2 years ago

Yes and no. In this case it won't make a difference.

jhanoncomm• 2 years ago

They raised $2M on the original idea this pivoted off which is insane.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/30/stashpad-is-a-notepad-for-...

theamk• 2 years ago

The product is browser first and document history is stored locally

so.. for throwaway documents then?

browser storage is one of the worst data places imagineable. Hard to backup, very hard for user to access, impossible to sync or share. And very unreliable too: many troubleshooting procedures for web apps start with "reset browser profile" or "clear site data"

RajT88• 2 years ago

The new and improved Pastebin

willsmith722• 2 years ago

"document history is stored locally" doesn't necessarily mean "document history is not stored in the cloud/elsewhere"

SahAssar2• 2 years ago

It sort of does. Not in a strict semantic sense, but I don't think any user of a service that says it stores stuff "locally" expects it to upload that to somewhere else without explicit consent.

It sounds like your interpretation is like if I said "our data is stored on our servers" but that actually meant "our data is stored on our servers, but also on AWS, GCP, Azure, Alibaba and shared with FSB, CIA, CCP, and the public and other parties (including but not limited to the Royal Bhutan Police)".

That would be true, but misleading to the point of being meaningless or (hopefully) potentially criminal.

qingcharles• 2 years ago

I assumed it was letting you store it on the local filesystem, not in the browser storage, which I agree is a bad place to store anything. There is one site I use that stores my favorites in the browser store and I had to write two JS bookmarklets so I can import/export my settings on a regular basis because pretty much every time Chrome crashes you can be assured that all my cookies and storage data gets zero'd out.

sigmonsays• 2 years ago

It needs to support some table of contents concept, pretty limited tbh. This looks like a very basic app. Who do they know at TC?

neom• 2 years ago

I have a bookmark on my bookmark bar that just does

data:text/html, <html contenteditable>

It's great for quick notes between tabs or copy/pasting things together into a cohesive comment.

ajcp• 2 years ago

This truly delighted me to learn, thank you!

blisterpeanuts• 2 years ago

Thanks for this. Very clever and handy.

I've been wanting to make a simple web app with persistent notes, a homegrown Google Keep clone, to run on my shared host, just for privacy purposes.

But this is a neat little non-persistent solution for single-location use.

jddj• 2 years ago

If it's just for you (and in some cases even if not), you can also just save the innerhtml directly to a database to get the persistence.

Run it through a sanitizer before serving it back, but otherwise it'll work fine.

maxmcd• 2 years ago

My slight modification on this is:

    data:text/html,<html><head><title>Notepad</title><style>html,body{margin:0;padding:0;}textarea{padding:10px;font-family:Courier;font-size:16px;height:100%;width:100%;border:none;outline:none;}</style></head><body><textarea style="height:100%;width:100%;font-size:16px;padding:10px;"></textarea><script>document.getElementsByTagName('textarea')[0].focus()</script></body></html>

dannyphantom• 2 years ago

I love, love, love threads like this where people share their bookmarklets.

It's how I found kill-sticky[1] which I use religiously.

javascript:(function()%7Bdocument.querySelectorAll(%22body%20%22).forEach(function(node)%7Bif(%5B%22fixed%22%2C%22sticky%22%5D.includes(getComputedStyle(node).position))%7Bnode.parentNode.removeChild(node)%7D%7D)%3Bdocument.querySelectorAll(%22html%20%22).forEach(function(node)%7Bvar%20s%3DgetComputedStyle(node)%3Bif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7Dif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7Dif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7D%7D)%3Bvar%20htmlNode%3Ddocument.querySelector(%22html%22)%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7D)()%3B%0A

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

consumer451• 2 years ago

Thanks for this!

Here is my modification to yours. I added a data URI notepad favicon.

    data:text/html,<html><head><link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="data:image/png;base64,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"><title>Notepad</title><style>html,body{margin:0;padding:0;}textarea{padding:10px;font-family:Courier;font-size:16px;height:100%;width:100%;border:none;outline:none;}</style></head><body><textarea style="height:100%;width:100%;font-size:16px;padding:10px;"></textarea><script>document.getElementsByTagName('textarea')[0].focus()</script></body></html>

qhungg289• 2 years ago

Add my own little twist to use the default Monospace font and change color scheme based on system theme:

data:text/html,<html><head><link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="data:image/png;base64,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"><title>Notepad</title><style>html,body{margin:0;padding:0;color-scheme:light dark;}textarea{padding:10px;font-family:Monospace;font-size:16px;height:100%;width:100%;border:none;outline:none;resize:none;}</style></head><body><textarea style="height:100%;width:100%;font-size:16px;padding:10px;"></textarea><script>document.getElementsByTagName('textarea')[0].focus()</script></body></html>

nbbaier• 2 years ago

This is great! Is there a way to persist the state across refreshes?

xwowsersx2• 2 years ago

This is wonderfully clever and simple!

lakpan2• 2 years ago

And then something happens and you lose it.

A million editors and you pick the least capable. My go-to is a sublime text window, even if ST is not my code editor.

buggy6257• 2 years ago

At this point I have PyCharm as my IDE, Obsidian as my official "Notes" with a capital N, and about 40 open unsaved text documents in Sublime Text that i just use as scratchpads. Writing down things, acting as a poor man's extended clipboard, etc.

I absolutely love this flow and it works so well for me now.

acheron• 2 years ago

But if there’s no login how do they track you for marketing purposes? This doesn’t sound like a web app at all.

ImPleadThe5th• 2 years ago

Instead they'll record all your keystrokes and feed that to their proprietary AI and sell it back to you

stevage• 2 years ago

I wonder how you compete with Google docs while charging $8 a month?

bombcar• 2 years ago

A full office suite with email from Microsoft is only $13/mo so the bar is pretty low.

Aachen• 2 years ago

"only", when 99% of the people are perfectly well served with the featureset of yesterdecade's LibreOffice suite, the three problems being the network effect (if everyone else is on another "network" or standard, you're forced to as well), that it looks like 2002, and that they have to spend 10 minutes on the first day to figure out that some buttons are in different places (I'm lost in Office nowadays, it really is just a matter of habit and not that either of them has an inferior layout). With the only functional defect being "it looks old", a modern style is what you pay 150€ every year for when buying into the Office monopoly. Except as a student: they're happy to help you gain the habit and experience the network effect.

I guess this is why Google Docs has been the first to make a dent: you seamlessly download the software to render the file format upon pageload, so there's no network effect on file formats anymore. Add a modern look, reach into your pockets to make it free until you've established a good market share, advertise for it in your already popular products (costing them nothing), et voila

jahewson2• 2 years ago

This is a Google Docs alternative in the way that a pair of shoes is a car alternative.

xwowsersx2• 2 years ago

A pair of shoes is a great alternative when a car would be overkill!

groestl• 2 years ago

Or stuck in traffic while you walk by

ies7• 2 years ago

But who will buy it when the price is $8 for the shoes, $6 for starter car and $12 for standard car.

jahewson2• 2 years ago

I’ll drive to my garden shed if I want to!

LegitShady• 2 years ago

To be fair that's what I consider Google docs relative to office.

catapart• 2 years ago

Awesome. This functions exactly like I expect it to, and without any unnecessary nonsense that I've come to begrudgingly accept.

Clean, simple, intuitive, and local-first. A really great product that I'm happy to have found! Thanks!

uptownhr2• 2 years ago

The thing that immediately stood out to me is `stash.new`. I thought that was only for google apps....

How is this accomplished? I does one register with chrome?

uptownhr2• 2 years ago

wow - did not know this but found it. https://get.new/

prattmic• 2 years ago

It is just a TLD. https://get.new/

bluish29• 2 years ago

Thanks for the link. I discovered that you can create new repo or gist on github using

repo.new

gist.new

That's very handy and useful.

soared• 2 years ago

Is this not exactly the papier chrome extension?

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/papier/hhjeaokafpl...

killerstorm• 2 years ago

How is it better than Emacs?

xenodium• 2 years ago

I’m seeing scratch solutions shared, so here’s mine for iOS

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/scratch/id1671420139

I tried to optimise for least number of taps to quickly write something down.

Here’s a blog post by a user https://irreal.org/blog/?p=11202

insane_dreamer• 2 years ago

why not just use something like Notational Velocity?

lewisjoe• 2 years ago

I tried using the product and out of curiosity inspected the editor. The editor is basically a CodeMirror plugin with all the tech heavy-lifting like realtime collaboration is enabled by CodeMirror itself.

It's clearly an overstretch to call this a Google Docs alternative, especially since Google docs is powered by insane levels of engineering. I know because I work on a competing word-processing product.

It's mildly surprising seeing such a shell product receiving millions of dollars in funding and even a published post in TechCrunch!

somenameforme• 2 years ago

I'll be swapping over. My usage for Google Docs is little more than pastebin + formating + access control. I suspect this is also probably a huge chunk of their overall use-case as well. In general, the least engineering amount possible to deliver what's actually needed is best IMO!

vander_elst• 2 years ago

Not sure where the data is actually stored, but assuming the last version is stored in the cloud, how can they prevent users from sharing data e.g. music though the docs? And how can they they stop users from doing that?

Stashpad launches Google Docs alternative you can use without any login

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