Getting started with Etherpad: The open source tool for collaboration

Discover the open source alternative to Google Docs for real-time collaborative editing.

In an age of digital collaboration, finding the right tool to facilitate effective teamwork is crucial. Etherpad is a real-time, open source collaborative text editor designed to streamline teamwork and boost efficiency. I’m a long-time user of Google Drive, and I consider it an excellent tool for collaboration, but what if you have team members who don’t have access or don’t want to set up a Google account? That’s where Etherpad comes to the forefront.

Etherpad’s simplicity makes it an ideal solution for teams needing a straightforward and powerful tool for collaborative writing. You can install Etherpad locally on Linux, MacOS, and Windows. There are public sites that host Etherpad so that you and your team can use it without setting up your server. One of those sites is hosted by Wikimedia.

When you first launch Etherpad you are greeted with the following display:

You can open a previously used Pad or start a “New Pad.” There is a welcome message from the Wikimedia Foundation, some notes on how to use the pad, and some limitations. Looking at the menu bar on top and the far right, you are invited to enter your name. Next button to the left is the ‘Share’ button which provides some options for sharing this pad.

You have the option to make the pad ‘Read only’ and also the link to share with other members of your team as well as an Embed URL. Next to that is the ‘Settings’ button, where you are provided with several options, including whether you will enable a chat window, font settings, authorship colors, and line numbers.

The following menu option to the left, which looks like a clock, is the ‘Timeslider.’ The Etherpad Timeslider is a feature that allows users to review the history of a document. It provides a visual timeline of all the changes made to the document, showing who made each edit and when.

Next on the menu to the left are a couple of horizontal arrows. This menu item allows you to import or export documents. You can upload any text file or document. Only plain text and HTML documents can be imported. You can export HTML, Plain text, or Etherpad documents.

Next is an eye-shaped object that allows for the clearing of authorship colors. It cannot be undone. Next are ‘Undo’ and ‘Redo’ buttons and then ‘Outdent’ and ‘Indent’ buttons. Next to that, the ‘Unordered list button’ and then an ‘Ordered list’ button. The last four menu choices are strikethrough, underline, italic, and bold.

Etherpad is a simple yet effective way to work collaboratively with a team. The project is open source with an Apache 2.0 license and excellent documentation that provides detailed installation instructions, including how to set up Etherpad on Docker. The project maintains a wiki with exceptional directions for developers.

More from We Love Open Source

• Why Markdown is essential when you are writing for the web
• Seamlessly convert Markdown documents to Office formats with Pandoc
• Enhance your writing skills with Ollama and Phi3
• Getting started with Llamafile tutorial

This article is adapted from “Etherpad: The open source tool for collaboration” by Don Watkins, and is republished with permission from the author.