FixFile
File Format

TXT (.txt)

Plain text format containing only unformatted characters. The most universal file format — readable by every program on every platform without any special software.

Extension
.txt
MIME Type
text/plain

Last updated

Overview

TXT (Plain Text) is the simplest possible file format: it stores text characters with no formatting, no images, no fonts, and no layout information. Every character is stored as a numeric code according to an encoding standard — most commonly UTF-8 (which covers all languages and emoji) or ASCII (English-only, 128 characters).

TXT files have been around since the earliest days of computing. They are the foundation of all programming — source code, configuration files, scripts, and data files (CSV, JSON, XML) are all plain text files with different extensions. The concept is universal: if a file contains only readable characters with no binary data, it is essentially a text file.

Common Uses

  • Notes and memos — quick notes in Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (macOS)
  • README files — software documentation included with application downloads (README.txt)
  • Configuration files — application settings stored as .txt, .ini, .cfg, or .conf
  • Data interchange — CSV files, log files, and many data formats are plain text
  • Coding — all source code files (.py, .js, .html, .css) are plain text with specific extensions

Advantages

  • Universal compatibility — every program on every platform can open and display a TXT file
  • No software required — readable in any text editor, terminal, or even a web browser
  • Version control friendly — plain text files diff perfectly in Git and other version control systems
  • Smallest possible size — only the characters themselves, no overhead whatsoever
  • Never becomes obsolete — ASCII and UTF-8 will be readable by any future system

Limitations

  • No formatting — cannot store bold, italic, font sizes, colours, tables, or images
  • No structure — a TXT file is just a sequence of characters; structure must be inferred from content
  • Encoding complications — TXT files can be in ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16, or legacy encodings (Windows-1252, Latin-1), causing mojibake if opened with wrong encoding

Supported Software

  • Windows: Notepad (native), Notepad++, Visual Studio Code
  • macOS: TextEdit (native), BBEdit, Visual Studio Code
  • Linux: gedit, nano, vim, any terminal
  • Every other application: virtually every program that handles files can read TXT