Features
A guided tour through the shipping app, workspace by workspace: Files and File Projects, Journal, Canvas and Vault, then editing, languages, data, atmosphere, personalization and platform. Click any picture to see it at full size.
Workspace: Files and File Projects
Files is the room for documents you open or drop in. A File Project adds a folder with its own tree, tabs, layout, search and Git. Both share the same editor, and a saved server connection can be the source of a project.
Open files with Ctrl+O, drop them from your file manager or pick them from Recent Files. The sidebar lists what the tabs hold, with change markers, and new documents start from a categorized type picker.
Register a folder under a name and get a live tree that refreshes when the disk changes. Filter by typing, navigate with the keyboard, and create, rename, move, duplicate or delete files from the context menu, with a confirmation before anything disappears.
See branch and divergence in the status bar and badges on changed files. Open a side by side diff, stage, commit, pull fast forward and push, clone or init, all with the Git on your machine. Loose documents in Files use the repository they live in, nested repositories and worktrees included. Credentials stay with Git and your operating system.
Save an SFTP, FTPS or FTP connection and edit on the server with the same tree and tabs. Unknown host keys are shown for you to trust, uploads are verified before they replace the file, and a changed server copy triggers a comparison instead of a silent overwrite.
Ctrl+Shift+F searches open buffers and every file of the workspace in a worker, with match case, whole word, regular expressions and include or exclude patterns. Replace reviews every hit first and lands as one undo step per document.
Byte Editor restores open tabs, the active document and unsaved text at the next start. A folder that went missing stays listed with its tabs and reconnects with Refresh, and a document whose drive vanished keeps its draft until you pick a new place. When another program changes an open file, it reloads in place; unsaved edits stay, and the disk version is offered beside a comparison.
Workspace: Journal
A journal is a local workspace of Markdown files, written with the same editor, effects and companions as everything else. Calendar, tags, mood and search find any day again; history and archives make sure nothing is lost.
Entries open as formatted text with the shared toolbar; Ctrl+Alt+M shows the Markdown source and back, both with one undo. Each entry has a title, date, mood, tags and a favorite flag, and autosave writes shortly after you stop typing.
A calendar with entry markers jumps to any day. Search covers titles, bodies and tags with highlighted excerpts, combined with a date range, mood, tags, favorites and entries with images. Large results are paged.
Chronicle groups your entries by month and year with excerpts, favorites, mood and tags in newest or oldest order. Memories brings back On This Day, a Random Memory and a clickable activity and mood calendar for the whole year.
Every entry keeps automatic and named versions beside the editor. Select one to see a text comparison and the changes to title, date, tags and mood, open it read only, or restore it; the current state is captured first.
Images and attachments are copied into the journal and never executed inside the editor. Entries link to each other with Wiki links and suggestions after two brackets, and the journal appears as its own volume in the workspace graph.
Deleted entries go to the trash with their history. Export writes a .bejournal archive with entries, metadata, trash, attachments and histories; Import creates a new journal from it. Change the location with a verified move, or delete a journal after a confirmation that names it.
Workspace: Canvas
A Canvas workspace is a folder with up to 500 boards. Cards are real files in the open JSON Canvas format, every gesture is one undo step, and boards open as tabs that dock and split like documents.
Markdown notes are edited formatted, right on the card, with the shared toolbar, search across the note and the same effects, sounds and companion targets as a document. Plain text cards stay literal, and text imports keep their file names.
A code card speaks any of the 44 languages with syntax colors, formatting and validation commands; the toolbar holds the language selector. Idle cards show a shortened preview, a double click opens the full editor.
Images and SVG render on the card, SVG with editable XML beside a live preview. Audio and video stream with range requests, GLB, VOX and OBJ models turn with the mouse, fonts show a specimen, and PDFs page through a read only viewer, passwords included.
Paste a public web address or point a card at a running local development server and the page runs inside a sandboxed frame. Double click to interact, press Escape to move on, or open the site in your browser when it refuses embedding.
Drag between the midpoint ports on the four sides of two cards to connect them, drag an occupied port to reconnect, release on empty space to remove. Groups carry their cards and wear their own border color. Every gesture is one undo step.
Zoom from 10 to 100 percent around the pointer, pan with the middle mouse button or Space, and use Fit Board, Fit Selection, the grid and the minimap to keep the overview. A .becanvas archive carries boards and every file to another machine.
Workspace: Vault
A Vault is an encrypted workspace in a single file that you keep wherever you like. Password entries, secure notes and private files sit in folders, open in the same editor and previews as everything else, and lock themselves when you step away. It needs no cloud and works independently of your BiteTheBytes account.
The Add menu of the workspace list creates or opens a Vault, a single .bevault database with AES 256 encryption, authenticated pages and a key derived from your master password. Keep it on any drive, register several vaults side by side and take one off the list without touching its file. Encryption runs in the native core, and keys never land in the storage of the interface.
Selecting a password opens a form right in the document area with title, username or email, password, website, notes, recovery codes, tags and a favorite star. Passwords stay hidden until you reveal them, copy with one click and come from a cryptographic generator when you need a new one. Fields brought in by an import stay editable, protected ones masked.
Secure notes and text files open in the same editor as everything else. Drop files on the tree or into a folder to store copies, your originals stay untouched, and images, audio, video, PDFs, fonts and 3D models open in the familiar previews, read straight from the encrypted store. Export writes an unencrypted copy only when you ask for it.
Nested folders hold passwords, notes and files side by side. New entries are named inline, F2 or a double click renames, and drag and drop moves entries between folders. Search finds titles, usernames, websites, tags and file names, but never looks inside passwords.
A Vault locks after five minutes without interaction, a time you can change, and whenever your computer locks or goes to sleep. Locking saves pending edits, closes every view and stops playback. A copied password leaves the clipboard after 30 seconds if nothing else was copied, and plaintext never ends up in session recovery, history, search indexes, thumbnails or temporary files.
Passwords and notes keep encrypted earlier versions in a history panel beside the entry, ready to restore. Vault settings change the master password and write encrypted backups. Password protected HTML exports in the supported format come in with their folders in one step, after an overview that shows names and folders but never passwords. There is no reset through your account, so keep the master password safe.
Editing
Tabs, splits, multi selection, a command palette and search that never blocks. Around it, the tools that save real time: formatters, converters, recipes, a local file history and an offline spell checker.
Several carets at once, column selection with the mouse, Ctrl+D for the next occurrence and Ctrl+Shift+L for all of them, and an expanding syntax selection. Line commands and platform aware shortcuts with Ctrl and Cmd semantics.
Ctrl+Shift+P opens a localized palette that filters every command, disabled ones included, so you learn where things live. Chord shortcuts such as Ctrl+K, X exist for the rarer actions, and every context menu shows its bindings. F12 saves a screenshot of the window and F11 one without the title bar, both as WebP files in your Documents folder.
Drag a tab to the center of a group to move it, to an edge to split, hold Ctrl to copy the view. Presets set a single editor, two or three columns, two or three rows or a 2 × 2 grid, and two views of one document share text and undo.
Alt+Shift+F formats and Alt+Shift+V checks JSON, HTML, XML, JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, YAML, TOML, SQL and Markdown. Sort lines, remove duplicates, change case, trim whitespace and convert indentation, each as one undo step, computed off the main thread.
Twenty local converters encode, decode and transform selections in place: Base64, URL and HTML escaping, JSON strings, UTF 8 bytes, number bases and code points. Text Recipes chain steps under one shortcut, and File History keeps versions of every saved text file.
An offline spell checker with English and German dictionaries underlines text and Markdown, suggests corrections and learns words in a personal dictionary; code stays untouched. Ctrl+Shift+E opens a searchable emoji picker.
Languages and Markdown
Every mode loads its parser on first use and brings syntax colors, indentation and comment rules. Markdown opens as formatted text with the source one toggle away, and Wiki links turn a folder into a web of notes with a 3D graph.
From Markdown, HTML, CSS and TypeScript to Rust, Python, C#, SQL, YAML and TOML, plus templates such as EJS, ERB and Jinja that keep the surrounding HTML alive. Unknown extensions are read, not guessed, and a categorized picker overrides the mode per document.
Markdown files open as formatted text with a toolbar for headings, lists, task lists, quotes, code and links. Ctrl+Alt+M adds an editable source pane in the same tab with a draggable splitter and one shared undo. The file on disk stays plain Markdown.
Insert a table from a grid picker, add or remove rows and columns, align columns left, center or right, and keep editing in the formatted view. The same tools work in journal entries and on Canvas notes.
Type two brackets and pick a document or a heading; [[Note|Label]] and [[Note#Heading]] work too, beside plain Markdown links. Ctrl click follows, and a rename started in the tree rewrites every reference in other documents, checked against concurrent changes.
The Graph icon in the right rail shows Markdown documents as points, other files as hollow circles and links as lines, every workspace in its own volume around the Byte Editor logo. Orbit, hover for names, double click to open, hide unlinked files.
Print and Export as PDF share one preview with A4, A3, Letter and Legal, orientation, margins, scale, page ranges and page numbers. Markdown prints rendered or as source with line numbers, images and 3D models print too, and text stays selectable in the PDF.
Large files, bytes and previews
Text and binary files up to two gibibytes open straight from disk through bounded windows in the Rust core. CSV becomes a table, binaries a hex grid with byte interpretations, and media, 3D models, fonts, PDFs and heightmaps get a preview beside their bytes.
Text beyond 16 MiB opens through a file backed engine with 128 KiB windows, global line numbers and delta undo. Search runs over the whole file in cancelable chunks, replacements land as one history step, and saves stream to disk.
Any file opens as bytes: paged UTF 8 hex for text, raw bytes for .bin, .dat, .rom and .hex with insert and overwrite, offset jumps, hex search such as 00 FF 41, and persistent offset bookmarks with the same gutter and keys as text.
UTF 8, uint8, int8 and bit columns sit beside ASCII in the same grid with one synchronized selection across every representation. Edit a value inline, validated, one byte transaction at a time.
Ctrl+Alt+T switches CSV and TSV between source and an editable table with movable columns, filters and explicit sorting that you apply to the document on purpose. Rows are virtualized, so large sheets stay smooth.
Images including PSD composites, SVG beside its XML, audio and video render next to the document and stream from the current buffer, unsaved edits included. An Editor, Split and Preview switch, remembered per file, decides how much of each you see, and the preview follows the file you are working on.
GLB, glTF, FBX, OBJ, STL, PLY, DAE and VOX models decode in the background with mouse navigation and unload when you leave the tab; OBJ and MTL sources keep their syntax colors. TTF, OTF, WOFF and WOFF2 open as a specimen, PDFs as a pager with password entry.
RAW, R8, R16, R32, HGT and EXR files open as a grayscale terrain image while every byte stays editable in Split. Set width, height, sample type and byte order for headerless data, or let EXR read its own header, with auto contrast and a vertical flip.
Atmosphere
The expressive layer is what makes Byte Editor different: a transparent GPU canvas for particles, a small synthesizer for key sounds, screen effects per document type and companions on the status bar. All optional, all outside your document, all off when your system asks for reduced motion.
Spark, Trail, Pulse, Minimal, Neon Sparks, Ink Bloom, Pixel Burst, Glyph Echo, Energy Trail and Constellation, rendered with WebGPU and a canvas fallback. Particles fall with gravity, land on text lines, gain momentum when you type fast, and deleted glyphs can shatter.
A speed reactive trail, a click impulse, a stronger trail while selecting and orbiting particles while idle extend the native cursor without replacing it. Limit the effect to the document area or let it roam the whole application.
Deep Thock, Clicky Switch, Tactile, Classic Typewriter, Soft, Terminal, Retro Arcade, Sci Fi Energy, Crystal and Paper Ink, synthesized locally with brightness, impact, variation and stereo controls. Nothing is downloaded, nothing plays without your say.
Ten backgrounds such as Aurora, Particle Dust, Data Flow, Sakura Petals and Spirit Lights, overlays such as Scanlines, Vignette and Manga Halftone, and typing reactions from Typing Wave to Gravity Lens, Chromatic Pulse and Heat Haze, chosen per document family. Your own images work as background, watermark or edge decoration.
Six companions share the status bar, up to three at once. Five characters walk, pick up your cursor, eat the text you delete and spit it back, catch falling letters, can be thrown across the window and play together. The sixth is a basketball with a hoop that docks to either side of the window: throw it through, and long shots score three points.
A local library holds your own PNG, JPEG and WebP images. Assign them per document family as a document background, a watermark or an edge decoration, then set placement, focus, opacity, a readability veil, saturation, blur and scale, and let them move gently with the pointer. Assigned images travel with your profiles, and bounded copies keep the editor fast.
Music
Open a folder of music and Byte Editor plays the whole collection while you work. The folder is the playlist, a compact player waits in the title bar, and a ten band equalizer and two visualizations come with it. It plays the music files you already have, straight from your disk.
Open any folder of music as a workspace and its tree becomes the playing order, subfolders included. Play in background keeps the music going while you switch documents, tabs or workspaces, and the player in the title bar brings seeking, volume, previous and next and a paged queue. Play in folder order, let Shuffle visit every track once per round, or repeat the current track.
Ten bands from 31 Hz to 16 kHz with up to 12 dB of boost or cut shape every track as it plays. Start from presets such as Rock, Pop, Techno, Jazz, Classical, Voice or Bass Boost, and your own curve stays available while you try others. Automatic headroom keeps boosted bands clean, and both players share the same settings.
Synth or Neon Spectrum turn the equalized signal into motion, in the player or across the whole window or monitor. F10 switches between editor, window and fullscreen, Esc leaves, and the controls fade away until you move the pointer. If you like, your companions dance to the beat and the letters of the title move along.
Personalization
A Settings sidebar on the right with search, categories and undo. Profiles carry the complete setup between machines, the theme editor checks contrast for you, and every document remembers its own zoom.
Default Dark and Default Light come built in; save your own, rename, export and import them, up to 64. One profile file holds every preference, update settings, sidebar and graph state and the whole background image library, never documents, workspaces or credentials.
Eight colors and three state sliders in front of you, an Advanced card with surface overrides, six syntax colors and 54 contrast controls in nine searchable sections. Every change previews live and is checked against WCAG ratios.
Beam, block, outline, underline or corner marks with thickness, glow and a static, blinking, pulsing or breathing motion. Pick a font, size, weight, letter spacing, ligatures and line height, and wrap at the window, at 80, 100, 120 or custom columns with a guide.
Ctrl plus the wheel or Ctrl+Plus and Ctrl+Minus scale a document from 50 to 400 percent; Ctrl+0 resets. The zoom is remembered per file, journal entry and Canvas card, separate from the editor font size, profiles and undo.
English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Italian and Russian, with every visible string translated, plural rules from the platform and a System Default option that follows your Windows language.
Settings and Graph share the right rail. The sidebar has a search field with aliases, a category selector and cards per section; Ctrl+Z undoes a settings change while it has the focus, and UI animation runs Off, Subtle or Lively.
Platform
Byte Editor ships as a native application for Windows on x64 and ARM64 and for macOS as a universal build on Intel and Apple Silicon, with Linux coming soon. Documents, history and statistics live in a Rust core that runs as its own process; the interface never holds state the core cannot see.
Two native packages, each with EXE and MSI installers built with Byte Installer: a wizard in ten languages, Start Menu and optional desktop shortcuts, repair and rollback. Windows 10 or later.
A single universal build runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, with the same editor, workspaces, previews and shortcuts, every command in the native macOS menu bar, and updates inside the app.
Text, bytes, undo history and statistics belong to the core, so undo, search and saving behave the same in every view, memory stays bounded, and two views of one document cannot disagree.
No telemetry, no analytics. The renderer runs sandboxed with context isolation, the clipboard accepts only text and HTML within limits, the native core is verified by hash before it starts, and the only outbound connections are the license check, the update check and the servers you add yourself.
Check for updates in the Help menu shows the installed build, finds a matching release, downloads it only on request, verifies the signature and installs it in place for MSI installations. Automatic checks and a Stable or Beta channel are one switch each.
Sign in once with your BiteTheBytes account, no license keys. Two devices per license, 14 days of offline use between checks, and if verification fails you can still save, export and recover before signing in again.
WCAG AA contrast for normal text, every interaction reachable by keyboard, reduced motion respected by every effect, localized labels in ten languages, and menus that show the bindings of your platform.
FAQ
A text, code and notes editor for Windows and macOS with a shared Rust core, with Linux coming soon. It handles everyday text and formatted Markdown, 44 code and markup modes, CSV tables, binaries in a hex grid with byte interpretations, very large files, journals, Canvas boards for notes, code, media and websites and an encrypted Vault for passwords and private files, and adds an optional expressive layer of typing effects, key sounds, companions and a Music Box.
No. It is an editor first: fast navigation, multi selection, search and replace, Git basics and remote workspaces. There is no debugger, no IntelliSense and no plugin API today. Language services are planned as optional modules.
Windows and macOS today: native x64 and ARM64 packages on Windows and a universal Apple Silicon and Intel build on macOS, with Linux coming soon and the same features and shortcuts. The browser build is a development environment, not a release.
Files beyond the in memory fast path open through a file backed engine with bounded windows, resumable search and crash safe recovery journals, up to two gibibytes per file. Binaries get a paged hex grid with UTF 8, integer and bit columns beside ASCII instead of a text buffer.
Yes. Typing effects, pointer effects, key sounds, screen effects, companions and the Music Box are separate switches, and all of them stay off when your system requests reduced motion. Effects never touch document content, undo or saving.
Yes. Open a folder of MP3, AAC, FLAC, Ogg, Opus or WAV files and the Music Box plays it as a playlist while you work, with a ten band equalizer and two visualizations.
Yes. Status, badges, side by side diffs, branches, staging, commits, fast forward pull and push, clone, init and remotes. Credentials stay with Git and your operating system.
Yes. Switch the file source to SFTP, FTPS or FTP, save the connection, and edit remote files with host key checks, verified uploads and conflict detection. Secrets can be kept in the operating system store. Remote files are limited to 16 MiB, and Git and workspace wide search stay local features.
A folder of boards where notes, code cards, images, audio, video, 3D models, fonts, PDFs and live websites sit as cards you connect and group. Boards use the open JSON Canvas format, files are copied into the folder, and a .becanvas archive moves everything to another machine.
An encrypted workspace for passwords, secure notes and private files, stored as one .bevault file wherever you choose. It encrypts with AES 256, locks itself after a period without interaction, five minutes by default, and works independently of your BiteTheBytes account. Nothing is stored with us, so a forgotten master password cannot be reset.
Yes. Markdown files open as formatted text with a toolbar for headings, lists, tables and links, plus Wiki links with suggestions. The file on disk stays plain Markdown, and an editable source pane is one toggle away.
44 document modes, among them HTML, CSS, Less, Sass, JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, TSX, EJS, ERB, Jinja, PHP, Python, Rust, C, C++, C#, assembly, Swift, Lua, Ruby, Perl, shell, SQL, JSON, YAML, TOML, INI, XML, Markdown and common build files. Unknown extensions are recognized by content.
Ten: English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Italian and Russian. Every visible string is translated, and a System Default option follows your system language. Spell checking ships English and German dictionaries.
Yes. Check for updates in the Help menu shows the installed build, downloads a verified release on request and installs it in place for MSI installations, with an optional automatic check and a Stable or Beta channel. EXE and portable installations check only and point you to the Downloads section of your account.
No telemetry and no analytics. The only connections Byte Editor makes on its own are the license check against your BiteTheBytes account and, when you ask for it, the update check. It keeps working offline for 14 days between license checks.
Byte Editor is a commercial product, available as a perpetual license or a subscription for individuals and companies. A perpetual license includes 12 months of updates and stays valid in the last unlocked version forever. Two devices per license.