novelWriter vs textarea.my
novelWriter and textarea.my are both code editors software. NovelWriter is open source under GPL-3.0, with 3.2k GitHub stars. Textarea.my is open source under MIT, with 2.5k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick novelWriter when
- You are writing a long work of fiction and want a free, offline alternative to Scrivener that keeps everything in plain text files.
- Pick textarea.my when
- You want to jot down or share a short note instantly with no account and no server storing it.
Side by side
A plain text editor for writing novels as many small documents, with Markdown-like formatting, notes, cross-references and manuscript export.
A minimal browser text editor that compresses your text into the page's URL hash, so a note is saved and shared by copying the link.
It is maintained mostly by one developer and has no mobile or cloud sync of its own.
Long texts make very long URLs, and anyone who gets the link can read the note.
Usable (both)
Desktop app
Cloud service
Python and Qt6
HTML and JavaScript
Open source, GPL-3.0 (strong copyleft)
Open source, MIT (permissive)
Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
3.2k GitHub stars
2.5k GitHub stars
Established: started 8 years ago, latest release v26.2.2.
Young: started 10 months ago, latest release v1.0.0.
Other comparisons
More code editors
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-06 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.