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Scratchpad

The scratchpad is an editable text panel in the sidebar. Use it to collect lines from a file as you read, add notes, and convert text such as a Base64 string, a URL-encoded value, or an epoch time. Vaste keeps its content between sessions.

Open the scratchpad

Section titled “Open the scratchpad”

Press Ctrl + Shift + S, select the notebook icon in the sidebar rail, or select More actions (…) → Scratchpad. Use the same shortcut or icon to close it.

The scratchpad is one text area. Type, paste, and edit in it as in any text box.

Add text from a file

Section titled “Add text from a file”

Each of these adds the text on a new line at the end of the scratchpad and opens the panel:

  • Line menu: right-click a line in Text view or Grep view and select Send to scratchpad. If you have selected text, a block, or a line range, Vaste sends the selection. Lines in a block or a line range are cut after 2,000 bytes, as when you copy them, and a selection over the copy limits sends only the line you right-clicked. See Selecting and copying. Without a selection, Vaste sends the line you right-clicked, up to 4 MiB.
  • Send selection: this button in the scratchpad sends the current selection. Without a selection, or with one over the copy limits, Vaste shows Select some text in the viewer first.
  • Table view: the row menu, Record view, and the cell popover can send a row or a cell. See Columns and record view.
  • NDJSON view: expand a record and select Send to scratchpad to send the formatted record. See NDJSON view.

Transform text

Section titled “Transform text”

The scratchpad converts text in place:

  1. Select the text to convert in the scratchpad. To convert all of it, select nothing.

  2. Choose a conversion in Transform.

  3. Select Apply.

Transform What it does
Base64 encode Encodes the text as Base64, from its UTF-8 bytes
Base64 decode Decodes Base64, including the URL-safe form with - and _, with or without = padding
URL encode Encodes characters such as spaces and & as %20 and %26
URL decode Decodes % sequences back to characters
JSON pretty-print Formats JSON with two-space indentation
JSON minify Removes all spacing from JSON
Hex to text Decodes hexadecimal bytes as UTF-8 text, ignoring 0x, spaces, commas, and colons
Epoch to ISO date Converts one epoch number to a UTC date and time

JSON pretty-print and JSON minify can change the last digits of whole numbers with 16 or more digits, such as 64-bit IDs, and keep only the last value of a key that appears twice in an object.

Epoch to ISO date needs a single number: select the number if the scratchpad holds anything else. It picks the unit from the size of the number: seconds, milliseconds, microseconds, or nanoseconds. The result shows the unit it used, for example 1790000000 becomes 2026-09-21T14:13:20.000Z (s).

If a conversion fails, Vaste shows the reason in a notification, such as Not valid base64, Invalid JSON with the parser’s message, Hex input has an odd number of digits, or Not a number, and leaves the text unchanged.

Copy and clear

Section titled “Copy and clear”
  • Copy copies all of the scratchpad’s text and shows Copied.
  • Clear empties the scratchpad. If it holds more than 1,000 characters, Vaste asks Clear scratchpad? first.

Copy, Clear, and Apply are dimmed while the scratchpad is empty.

How the scratchpad is saved

Section titled “How the scratchpad is saved”

Vaste saves the scratchpad automatically as you type and restores it when you start Vaste again.

There is one scratchpad for all files and windows. Each window loads the scratchpad when it opens, and then saves its own copy as you type.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”