Firepad is an open source, collaborative text editor. It is designed to be embedded inside larger web applications with collaborative code editing added in only a few days.
Firepad is a full-featured text editor, with capabilities like conflict resolution, cursor synchronization, user attribution, and user presence detection. It uses Firebase as a backend, and doesn’t need any server-side code. It can be added to any web app. Firepad can use either the CodeMirror editor or the Ace editor to render documents, and its operational transform code borrows from ot.js.
If you want to extend your web application capabilities by adding the simple document and code editor, Firepad is perfect.
Firepad is used by several editors, including the Atlassian Stash Realtime Editor, Nitrous.IO, LiveMinutes, and Koding.
Key Features
- True collaborative editing.
- Intelligent OT-based merging and conflict resolution.
- Support for both rich text and code editing.
- Cursor position synchronization.
- Undo / redo.
- Text highlighting.
- User attribution.
- Presence detection.
- Version checkpointing.
- Images.
- Extend Firepad through its API.
- Supports all modern browsers.
Website: github.com/FirebaseExtended/firepad
Support:
Developer: Michael Lehenbauer and the team at Firebase
License: MIT License

Firepad is written in JavaScript. Learn JavaScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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| Foam | Personal knowledge management and sharing system |
| CodiMD | Realtime collaborative markdown notes taking inspiration from Hackpad |
| ProseMirror | Rich semantic content editor |
| CryptPad | Realtime collaborative editor |
| HedgeDoc | Create real-time collaborative markdown notes |
| Notes | Distraction free notes taking app for Nextcloud |
| Collabora | Desktop office suite |
| Firepad | Full-featured text editor |
| Gobby | Supporting multiple documents in one session and a multi-user chat |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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