The guide

Getting started

Install Typestead from Google Play on a phone running Android 8.0 or newer. Open it and sign in with your Google account: that starts your 7-day trial with every feature switched on.

The first time, Typestead asks you to choose a workspace folder. It keeps two folders inside it: temp for drafts of tabs you haven't saved yet, and saved, the default place new files go.

Ways to use it

• Homework on the bus. Open your class project from Files, fix the bug, save, done. Smart indent keeps Python honest on a tiny screen.
• Learning a new language. Completion suggests keywords as you type, so you learn the words of Go, Rust or SQL by using them.
• Practising SQL. Write and tidy queries anywhere; completion follows your capitals.
• Notes in Markdown. Headings show up in the Function List, so a long note becomes easy to jump around.
• Reading logs and data dumps. Files with millions of lines open in the read-only streaming viewer without freezing.
• Quick config fixes. JSON, YAML, INI and XML are highlighted, and line endings and encodings are kept exactly as they were.
• Keyboard on the desk. Plug in a hardware keyboard and the shortcuts work, so a phone becomes a small workstation.

Files and your workspace

• Open files with the Storage Access Framework: Typestead only sees the files and folders you pick, one grant at a time.
• The side drawer is a file explorer for project folders. Create and delete files and folders there.
• Saving never overwrites another file. If the name is taken, Typestead adds “(1)”.
• Close the app with unsaved tabs and they come back next time, text and all (session restore). Drafts are stored encrypted.
• Up to 30 tabs can be open at once.

Writing code

• Highlighting for 25 programming languages plus JSON, XML/HTML, CSS, YAML, INI, Markdown, Diff, Log and Batch. The language is picked from the file extension or a #! line.
• Completion appears above the keyboard: keywords, built-ins and words already in your file.
• Symbol bar puts brackets, quotes and operators one tap away.
• Function List (Code menu): classes, functions, methods, labels, SQL objects and Markdown headings. Tap one to jump to it.
• Smart indent and dedent per language, and auto-closing brackets and quotes that you can type straight over.
• Matching brackets are highlighted, and Go to matching bracket skips the ones inside strings and comments.
• Comment toggles for line and block comments.
• Line tools: duplicate, delete, indent, unindent, change case, trim, sort, remove duplicates, remove empty lines, tabs to spaces.

SELECT name, AVG(score)
FROM results
WHERE term = 'T4'
gro

Find and replace

Search with match case, whole word, or regular expressions. In a replacement, $1 inserts the first captured group. Patterns that would take forever are stopped, so a bad regex can't hang the app.

Go to line jumps straight to a line number.

total = 0
for mark in marks:
    total += mark
print(total / len(marks))

Big, odd and broken files

• Huge files open in a read-only streaming viewer instead of the editor.
• Encodings are detected (UTF-8, UTF-16 with or without a byte-order mark, Windows-1252). You can reopen a file in another encoding or convert it.
• Line endings (LF, CRLF, CR) are kept as they were, or changed on purpose.
• Binary files are recognised and kept safe from accidental edits.

Make it yours

In Settings, Appearance can follow your phone or be Light, Dark or Black (best on OLED screens). There's also a quick switch under View, Dark mode.

Zoom, word wrap, line numbers and show-whitespace are all in the View menu.

Your trial, licence and devices

• The trial lasts 7 days from your first sign-in and includes everything.
• After that the editor locks. You can still buy, restore a purchase, sign out and export unsaved drafts.
• One purchase covers up to 2 Android devices on the same Google account. On a third device, sign one out or choose Sign out everywhere and use here.
• Lost a phone? Use Settings, Sign out everywhere on your other device.
• Typestead works offline for up to 7 days between licence checks. Changing the phone's clock doesn't extend anything.
• Copies installed from outside Google Play, or modified copies, can't get a licence. Install from Google Play.
• For security, adding new devices is limited to 4 a month.

Privacy in one paragraph

Typestead has no ads and no analytics. It uses the internet only for your licence, and never sends file names or contents. The licence server stores a scrambled code made from your Google account ID (never your email address), your device IDs and model names, your trial start and your purchase status. Read the full privacy policy.

Not in Typestead yet

We'd rather say it plainly: code folding, multi-cursor editing, macros, plugins, split view, find in files, printing, bookmarks, reloading when a file changes elsewhere, and renaming in the explorer aren't there yet. Tell us which one you want first on the contact page.