First-time usage

Read and change all data

Despite this access, RetroTxt always ignores websites other than those you tell it to monitor in the background. It also ignores all markup text, such as HTML or XML, for your privacy and overall browser performance.

If unrestricted access remains a worry, you can configure the browser to restrict RetroTxt further.

Add extension

On installation from the Chrome web store or Microsoft Edge add-ons, your browser will prompt for permission to read and change all data on all websites. Unfortunately, there is no workaround to avoid this.

See, Read and change all data to the right.

RetroTxt add extension — Add "RetroTxt"? prompt to Add extension

New install

What is .ANS

The .ANS filename extension signifies text files embedded with ANSI escape control characters for terminals to permit the layout and colorization of the text.

Once installed, you can test the functionality by viewing the RetroTxt ANSI logo hosted at:

https://retrotxt.com/e/preview_02.ans

RetroTxt new logo

RetroTxt ANSI logo in the tab

Hide the header

You can click the blue arrow on the upper-left corner to hide the header and remove the clutter.

RetroTxt hidden header — The blue arrow is clickable and hides the header

Original text

If you want to view the original ANSI document, focus the tab and to launch a view source tab, tap:

Ctrl u or Cmd Option u

RetroTxt raw text — RetroTxt logo raw ANSI text

Monitor a new website

This example shows how to add a new website to the collection that RetroTxt monitors in the background. In this case, we will use the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority website at iana.org, which hosts many documents in plain text.

In a tab, open the text document special-use-domain-names.txt.
Despite being plain text, RetroTxt ignores the page as it is not monitoring iana.org.

RetroTxt toolbar menu — Special-Use Domain Names text document

Click the RetroTxt toolbar button and a popup will display the websites it monitors in the background. You can learn more about or remove these websites.

In the popup, click the blue To include a new website button.

Under Feature > Run RetroTxt on files hosted on these domains > Paste a URL or hostname input, copy and add the website URL:
https://www.iana.org

Run RetroTxt on files hosted on these domains — Add and monitor www.iana.org

Reload a tab

To reload or refresh a tab,
tap F5 or Cmd r

Switch back to the tab with the special-use-domain-names.txt document and reload. RetroTxt will now format the text!

RetroTxt default plain text styling — Special-Use Domain Names styled with the IBM VGA font

Change the font

Click the RetroTxt fonts options button (the TT icon) in RetroTxt toolbar popup.

Choose IBM Plex Mono Regular from the Suggested fonts.

Switch back to the tab with the special-use-domain-names.txt text, and the font will update.

RetroTxt using IBM Plex Mono — Special-Use Domain Names using the IBM Plex mono font

Swap colors

Click the RetroTxt display options button (the monitor icon) in RetroTxt toolbar popup.

Under Colors > Text pairs, choose the white on light selection.

RetroTxt text pairs — White on light text pair selection

ANSI text

A black background Text pair works best with ANSI text.

Switch to the tab with the special-use-domain-names.txt text, and the page colors will reflect the change. Feel free to revert to the MS-DOS color pair or choose another.

RetroTxt white on light text — The document using the white on light text pair selection

Remove a website monitor

Finally, to remove the monitoring of www.iana.org.

Click the RetroTxt settings button (the cog icon) in RetroTxt toolbar popup.

Under Feature > Run RetroTxt on files hosted on these domains
Click the X button (remove) besides the www.iana.org entry.

RetroTxt delete entry — Remove a URL or hostname

Switch back to the special-use-domain-names.txt document tab and reload. It should revert to the original, unformatted text.

Original document — The plain text document is in a browser tab