ToolForge Help Documentation

A complete guide to ToolForge, from comparing two texts to finding duplicate files.

Last Updated: November 15, 2026

1. Getting Started

ToolForge has nine tools, each on its own tab under the heading: Compare, Notes, Clean text, Clipboard, Open links, Text to table, Table to CSV, JSON to Excel and Duplicate files. Beside the tabs are three buttons: Find anything (a search over every tool, note, clip, step, recipe and action), How ToolForge works (a short help window) and Settings and backup. Everything happens on this page; nothing is uploaded and there is no account. You can drop a file or a folder anywhere on the page, and the tool on screen opens it. Most results can be sent from one tool to another with Send to, for example a cleaned text to Compare or a table to a note.

2. Comparing Two Texts

On Compare, paste the first version into Original and the changed version into Changed, or press Open above either box to open a text file of up to 25 MB. Dropping two files on the page puts the first in Original and the second in Changed; one file goes to the side you drop it on. The comparison runs as you type. Swap exchanges the two texts, and Clear empties both (Undo brings them back). Each side can hold up to 2,000,000 characters and 200,000 lines.

3. Reading the Differences

The summary says how much of the two texts stayed the same and how many lines were changed, removed and added. Below it, each line of both texts is listed with its line number: removed lines are red, added lines green, and a line that was edited is one changed line, the old version in red and the new in green, with the changed words (or letters) in a stronger colour. Spaces and invisible characters inside a change are shown as dots and arrows, so a change that is only a space can be seen. Runs of more than three unchanged lines fold away behind a Show button, with two lines kept on each side of a change. Next change and Previous jump from one difference to the next. Up to 6,000 lines of changes are drawn at once.

4. Compare Options and Patches

• Side by side or One column: the two versions next to each other, or one column with - and + in front of each removed and added line. Screens narrower than 760 px always show one column.
• Words or Letters: what is marked inside a changed line. Letters work on lines of up to about 4,000 characters together; longer lines are marked by words.
• Ignore capital letters and Ignore spaces: lines that differ only in capital letters, or only in spaces and tabs, count as the same. The summary then says that the texts are the same apart from those.
• Copy as patch: the differences as a unified patch (the format git reads), with three unchanged lines around each group of changes. With Ignore capital letters or Ignore spaces ticked, the patch leaves those differences out as well (as diff -w does), so it matches what you see.

A removed line and an added line are paired as one changed line when at least 45% of their letter pairs match; when a block of more than about 4,000 line pairs changed, lines are paired in order instead.

5. Writing Notes

Press New note (or N while you are in Notes and not typing). The note has a title and a text, and saves as you type; below it are the word count, the reading time for longer notes, when it was edited and created, and the folder it is in. The buttons above the text add bold, italic, a heading, a bullet list, a checklist, a link or code. Typing works the same way: - [ ] starts a checklist item, - or 1. starts a list, # starts a heading, **bold**, *italic*, ~~struck out~~, ==marked== and `code`, and [text](https://...) for a link. Enter carries a list on (twice ends it), and Tab and Shift Tab move a list item in and out. Preview shows the note as it reads; ticking a checklist item there ticks it in the text. Links typed in a note open in a new tab.

6. Folders, Tags, Search and Trash

The side of Notes lists All notes, Pinned, your folders (up to 100; New folder adds one), Trash, and the tags used in your notes (#word anywhere in a note). Choose one to see its notes. The menu beside a folder's name renames or deletes it; deleting a folder moves its notes to another folder and deletes no note. Pin to the top keeps a note at the head of the list. The search box finds notes whose title or text holds every word you type. A deleted note goes to Trash for 30 days, where Restore brings it back and Delete now deletes it for good; Empty trash deletes them all for good after asking.

7. Importing and Downloading Notes

Import (or dropping files on Notes) reads Markdown and text files, each as a note (a first line starting with # becomes the title), and notes files from Download all or a ToolForge backup. Every imported note is checked value by value, and notes are added while there is room: an import says how many were left out and how many longer than 200,000 characters were cut. Download all saves every note as a Markdown file in a .zip, one folder per notes folder (names a computer cannot hold, such as a name made only of dots, are changed), every note in one Markdown file, or a notes file for importing later. Each note's menu copies its text, makes a copy, downloads it as Markdown or text, prints it (only the note is printed) or sends it to another tool.

8. Clean Text

Paste or type your text on the left (or open a text file of up to 25 MB). The steps in the middle run from top to bottom and the result appears on the right, with the counts of characters, words and lines. Each step's note says what it changed; click it to see the text just after that step. Add a step opens the list of steps by group, with a search box; each step has its own settings below its name. Drag a step by its number, or focus the number and press the up and down arrows, to move it; untick a step to skip it; the cross removes it (Undo brings it back). Up to 50 steps can be used at once. The result can be copied, downloaded, put back into Your text to clean it again, or sent to another tool.

Find and replace and Keep or remove lines take plain text or a pattern (a regular expression). Type \n for a new line and \t for a tab; in a pattern, $1 puts back the first group. If the page ever stops while a step with a pattern is working, the next time it opens those steps are switched off and a note says so.

9. Recipes and Hidden Characters

Recipes holds ten ready-made sets of steps (Tidy up, Fix text copied from a PDF, Clean up a list, Plain text from a web page, Plain punctuation, Pull out email addresses, Pull out links, Put it all on one line, Lines to a comma list, Comma list to lines) and the ones you save (up to 100). Using a recipe replaces your steps; Undo brings them back.

Found in your text lists what is hiding in the text, with a button that adds the step that fixes each kind, and Fix all adds them together. The Hidden characters view, above your text and the result, shows spaces at line ends, non-breaking and odd spaces, invisible characters, curly quotes and long dashes, tabs and line ends; Changes shows what the steps removed and added, line by line.

10. The Clipboard List

Type or paste text and press Keep (or Ctrl Enter), press Keep what I copied, or press Ctrl V on this screen; copying in the other tools keeps a copy here too, unless you switch that off in Settings. Click a clip to copy it back. A clip with {{name}} asks for the blank each time; {{date}}, {{time}}, {{day}}, {{month}}, {{year}} and {{isodate}} fill themselves. Each clip can be pinned (it stays when the list is cleared), edited, sent to another tool or deleted; the chips filter by kind (pictures, templates, links, emails, phone numbers, colours, numbers, code, text) and the search box by words. Keep what I copy in other apps reads the clipboard each time you come back to this tab, after the browser asks you once. Import or export saves the list as JSON or text, or adds clips from such a file.

11. Open Links

Paste a list, a web page or an email, or open a bookmarks file or a saved page. Every link is found (also addresses written without https, like example.com, unless you untick that) and listed with its site, marks for repeats, tracking tags and addresses that are not valid. Make a clean list, Remove repeats, Remove tracking tags and Sort tidy the box (Undo brings it back). Tick the links to open, choose a wait between tabs and how many to open per click, and press Open; Open next opens one link per click. Copy as gives a plain, Markdown, HTML or comma list, Bookmarks file saves them to import into your browser, and Save this set keeps them for next time (up to 100 sets). Up to 5,000 links are listed at once.

12. Text to Table

Paste data or open a file (CSV, TSV, text, JSON, Markdown, HTML or .xlsx, up to 25 MB). The separator is found for you, or choose Comma, Tab, Semicolon, | bar, Spaces or your own, and tick First row is the header. Below, the table can be searched, tidied (trim cells, remove empty rows or columns or repeated rows, fill empty cells from above), edited cell by cell, sorted by clicking a column name, and changed with the row and column menus; Swap rows and columns works for tables of up to 500 rows. Undo and Redo keep the last 60 changes. The footer shows each column's total and average, or how many different values it has. Save or copy as CSV, TSV, Markdown, JSON, HTML, SQL, a text box (for emails and code) or LaTeX, as an Excel file, as a table that pastes into Excel, Sheets, Word or Docs, or as a picture of up to 400 rows. Text to table uses up to 200,000 rows and 500 columns.

13. Table to CSV

Select a table on a web page, in an email or in a document, copy it, click the box and press Ctrl V (on a phone, press and hold and choose Paste). HTML code, Markdown, text tables and CSV can be pasted too, and Excel files (up to 25 MB) opened, one table per sheet. When there are several tables, choose one or All. The options cover merged cells (repeat the value or leave blank), the header (found, the first row or none), joining header rows, link addresses as columns, numbers as plain numbers (1,234.50 becomes 1234.50; phone numbers are left alone) and leaving out empty rows and columns. The CSV can use a comma, semicolon, tab or bar, Made for Excel (a mark at the start so every letter shows correctly, and Windows line ends), quotes around every cell, and Stop formulas from running. Save it as .csv (several tables as a .zip), copy it, save an Excel file with one sheet per table, or edit it in Text to table. A table whose merged cells would spread over more than 2,000,000 cells is too big to read here, and the tool says so.

14. JSON to Excel and Back

Paste or open JSON (up to 60 MB). Comments, trailing commas, single quotes, names without quotes, True, False and None, one record per line and a JavaScript name in front are read too, and the status line says what was fixed on the way. A mistake is shown with its line and column, and Show me jumps to it. Rows come from chooses which list becomes the rows. Lists inside each row can go in one cell, get their own columns, go to their own sheets linked by row number (up to 100 sheets), or stay as JSON; nested names can be written address.city, address_city or address city. A column's menu can leave it out or copy it. The preview shows the first 150 rows and 200 columns; all of them are saved. Download Excel file writes the sheets with dates, links and filter buttons as ticked; CSV of this sheet and Copy for Excel or Docs work on the sheet in view.

Excel to JSON reads rows pasted from a spreadsheet, a CSV file or an .xlsx file (choose the sheet), with dotted names nested and numbers and true or false as values unless you untick them, and empty values left out if you tick that.

15. Finding Duplicate Files

On Duplicate files, press Choose a folder (or drop a folder on the page, or press Choose files). Every file in the folder and its sub-folders is listed; hidden and system files (such as Thumbs.db and .DS_Store) are skipped unless you untick that, and so are files under 1 KB unless you change Skip files under. Then the tool looks for what you ticked under Look for:

• Exact copies: files of the same size are compared by a fingerprint of their first and last 32 KB, and those that still match by a SHA-256 fingerprint of the whole file. Large files are read in 16 MB pieces, so memory stays small.
• Copies by name: files in the same folder whose names are the same once copy marks are taken off (report (1).pdf, report - Copy.pdf, Copy of report.pdf, report copy 2.pdf, Dropbox, OneDrive, Syncthing and Nextcloud conflicted copies), when their content is not all the same.
• Look-alike photos: a 64-bit fingerprint of each photo; photos within 8 bits of each other are grouped. This is slower, so it is off until you tick it.

A progress bar shows each stage, and Stop shows what was found so far. One check lists up to 300,000 files and compares up to 20,000 photos; the result says when a limit was reached.

16. Groups, Keeping and Ticking

The result says how many extra copies there are and how much space they use, then lists the groups, exact copies first and the largest first. The chips filter by kind, and the search box finds a file by name or folder. In each group one file is kept (green) and, for exact copies, the others are ticked (red). Keep chooses which file is kept: the one with the original name (the default; among look-alike photos the largest picture), the oldest, the newest, the shortest path or the biggest picture. Keep this picks a file by hand, Tick all but the kept one and Untick work on one group. Copies by name and look-alike photos start unticked: they may be different versions. Pictures show a small preview; Open shows a picture, a PDF, a text, audio or video file in a new tab (other kinds of file open from your folder, never from the page).

17. Moving, Deleting and Scripts

The bar at the bottom shows how many files are ticked and how much space they use.

• Move to a Duplicates folder moves the ticked files into a folder named _Duplicates inside the folder you checked, in the same sub-folders as before. A file that would clash with one already there gets (2), (3) added to its name. Look through the folder, then delete it yourself when you are sure.
• Delete removes the ticked files for good: they do not go to the Recycle Bin or the Trash. It asks first, and warns when every copy in a group is ticked.
• Script saves a small file for Windows (.bat) or Mac and Linux (.sh) that moves the ticked files to _Duplicates or deletes them. Save it in the folder you checked and run it there: it lists every file it will change, says when files are deleted for good, and changes nothing until you type YES. It never replaces a file that is already there. A Windows script leaves out names with characters Windows does not allow, and says how many.
• List downloads every group as a CSV file for Excel (group, kind, action, path, size, date, picture size and fingerprint), or copies the paths of the ticked files.

Moving and deleting from the page work in Chrome and Edge on a computer, for a folder opened with Choose a folder; the browser asks once to allow changes in it. Elsewhere, use Script.

18. Cleaning a List of Names

Choose A list of names and paste file names or full paths, one per line, or press Names from a folder. Choose which copy marks to remove with the chips; (1), - Copy, Copy of, copy 2 and sync conflicts are on by default, _v2 and final and a number at the end are off, as they also remove real parts of names such as Chapter 2. Small letters in extensions and Tidy spaces and underscores are options. When the clean name is already there, the copy keeps its name or is left out. Copy clean names, Download .txt or Rename script (Windows or Mac and Linux; it asks before it renames anything) finish the job.

19. Saved Data, Backup and Limits

The tool keeps its data in this browser under names of its own: your notes, the text in each box, your steps and recipes, clips, sets of links, an edited table and settings, and the pictures of clips in the browser's database. Nothing is kept until you type, keep or change something; switching tools or opening a note writes nothing. Settings and backup shows how much is kept, Download a backup saves everything but the pictures in one file, Restore a backup puts a backup back (it is checked value by value first, and asks before replacing anything), and Delete everything removes only this tool's data.

• Compare: up to 2,000,000 characters and 200,000 lines on each side; text kept per box: up to 200,000 characters (longer text works, but is not kept for next time).
• Notes: up to 2,000 notes (Trash included) and 1,500,000 characters in all; a note up to 200,000 characters; 100 folders.
• Steps: 50 at once; recipes: 100; sets of links: 100.
• Clips: the newest 100, 300 or 1,000 that are not pinned, about 1,000,000 characters in all, 200 pictures; a clip holds up to 100,000 characters, a picture up to 20 MB and 50 megapixels.
• Files opened in a tool: 25 MB (JSON to Excel: 60 MB); an Excel file may unpack to 64 MB.
• Duplicate files: 300,000 files listed and 20,000 photos compared per check.

20. Keyboard and Accessibility

Every button and box can be reached with Tab. While you are using the tool and not typing (after a click or a tap in it, or while it fills the screen), 1 to 9 switch tools, / opens Find anything (arrow keys and Enter choose), ? opens the help window, N and P jump to the next and previous change in Compare, N starts a new note in Notes, Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y undo and redo table changes, and in the Clipboard list the arrow keys move between clips, Enter copies, P pins and Delete removes one. The site's own Ctrl+K search and the browser's keys are left alone. Steps move with the arrow keys on their numbers, menus with the arrow keys, and Escape closes menus and windows. Messages are announced to screen readers.

21. How It Was Checked

Before publishing, the tool's calculations were compared with separate programs written from the rules on this page: 189,821 cases in 19 groups, among them the line comparison against a separate program that finds the fewest changes, every changed, removed and added line and every patch read back to rebuild both texts, notes made to break the page, the copy-mark rules on thousands of names, file fingerprints against a well-known hashing library, groups of exact copies and look-alike photos, every cleaning step and recipe, links and tracking tags, CSV against a standard CSV reader, Excel files read back by a spreadsheet library, forgiving JSON, the scripts, saved data, backups and notes files made to break the tool, and long and hostile input. The page itself was then tested in a browser on phones and computers in both themes, with large folders, long texts, many notes, big tables and blocked storage.

Earlier versions of these tools could stop the page for minutes on one long line in a note (a run of [ or a heading with many spaces) and with a long run of > signs, run an HTML file from the checked folder with the site's address when it was opened, let a crafted column name change how the page worked, read 30 February and the year 0000 as dates, wrote dates before March 1900 and in the years 1 to 99 wrongly into Excel files, showed Skip files under 1 KB but skipped nothing, took up to 70 seconds on some long texts and stopped on tables of more than about 120,000 rows; that is fixed.

22. Troubleshooting and Support

• Compare says a text is too long. Each side can hold up to 2,000,000 characters and 200,000 lines; compare the text in parts.
• A new note or an import was refused. The notes are at the limit of 2,000 notes or 1,500,000 characters. Download some and delete them, or empty the Trash.
• Move and Delete are greyed out. They need a folder opened with Choose a folder in Chrome or Edge on a computer. Otherwise use Script.
• A copy was not found. Exact copies must be the same size and content; files under 1 KB are skipped unless you change Skip files under, and hidden files unless you untick that. Copies by name must be in the same folder.
• Only one tab opened. The browser stopped the others; allow pop-ups for this page, open a few per click, or use Open next.
• The clipboard cannot be read. The browser blocks it for this page; press Ctrl V instead, or allow it in the site settings.
• My text was not kept. Text of more than 200,000 characters in one box is not kept for next time.
• My steps with patterns were switched off. The page stopped while one of them was working last time. Check the pattern, then tick the step again.

For questions the FAQ does not answer, use the contact form.