How To
How-to guides
Step-by-step guides for getting the most out of WebF1 Pad.
Basics
- About WebF1, the maker of WebF1 Pad Who is behind WebF1 Pad, the company, what it does, and where to find it.
- Getting started with WebF1 Pad Create your first note, open files, use tabs and make yourself at home.
- Install and update WebF1 Pad Install the DEB, RPM, AppImage, Windows installer or Android APK, and learn how updates work.
- Export PDFs and print notes Turn any note or chat transcript into a clean PDF, or print it with the native dialog.
- Use the built-in generators Create UUIDs, passwords, memorable passphrases and usernames from the desktop Tools menu.
- Create your own theme Import a custom color theme as a JSON file, or start from a downloaded copy of a built-in theme.
- WebF1 Pad from the command line Open files from the terminal, forward to the running window, and use WebF1 Pad as your $EDITOR for git commits.
- Quick capture from anywhere Tray icon, global hotkey and desktop shortcuts for capturing a note without switching windows.
- Editing aids, find, spell check, formatting Find & replace, spell check with correction suggestions, Format Document for config files, and content zoom.
- Work with CSV files Open .csv/.tsv files as sortable tables, lay a Day column out as a weekly calendar with the Week view, pick the delimiter and edit cells right in the grid.
- Window and desktop integration Use the title bar's window menu, keep the pad on top or move it between monitors, and switch to a native title bar on Linux.
Cloud and backup
- Back up notes to your own cloud End-to-end encrypted S3 backup with MinIO, AWS S3, Wasabi or Cloudflare R2, your notes, your storage.
- Encrypt your backups Set the one passphrase that encrypts your cloud backups on this device, and generate a strong memorable one.
- Connect to a WebF1 Pad server Store notes, chats and prompts on your own WebF1 Pad server, create an account, sign in with two-factor, and recover a forgotten password.
AI and agents
- Set up AI chat Connect OpenAI-compatible providers, Anthropic or local Ollama models, and enable web search.
- Let compatible AI assistants work with your notes Connect opencode, Claude or another MCP-compatible assistant to the notes open in WebF1 Pad.
- Give the chat more tools with MCP servers Connect remote MCP servers or local commands to the AI chat, and see what the built-in server already provides.
- Web search backends Choose and set up DuckDuckGo, SearXNG, Tavily or Exa for grounded AI chat answers.
- Host-assisted uploads (large notes, byte-perfect) How the pad sends referenced note content straight to an MCP server's upload endpoint, with the text never passing through the model.