Native Windows app. Dark by default. Remembers everything you had open. No telemetry, no login, no nonsense.
v1.2.0 · ~2 MB · Windows 10/11 · GPL-3.0
using System;namespace Caret;class Program{ static void Main(string[] args) { // just opens. no splash screen. no tip of the day. Console.WriteLine("hello, world"); }}In 2025 the Notepad++ update infrastructure was compromised. That was the push to finally write something from scratch — something small, something we could read top to bottom and actually trust.
Caret is built with C# and WPF. It's a single executable. No plugins, no extension marketplace, no auto-updater phoning home. You download it, you run it, you edit text. That's the whole deal.
It won't replace your IDE. It's not trying to. It's the thing you open when you need to look at a log file, tweak a config, jot something down, or write a quick script. It should open before you finish clicking.
The coffee shop was quiet, except for the frantic scratching of Lukas’s pen. Spread across the table was his well-worn copy of " Fit fürs Goethe-Zertifikat B1.
" He had been staring at the Leseverstehen (reading comprehension) section for an hour, and his brain felt like a tangled ball of German grammar.
"I just need the Lösungen (solutions)," he whispered to himself, flipping toward the back of the book.
He had reached a practice exam about a "sustainable city project." He was sure the answer to question three was C, but the more he read the text, the more B looked like a trap designed specifically to ruin his afternoon. He held his breath and found the page. 3. b) fit furs goethe-zertifikat b1 losungen
Lukas let out a groan that made the barista look up. He had fallen for the trap. The text mentioned "cars," but the question was about "transportation infrastructure"—a subtle B1-level distinction that always tripped him up.
He didn't just look at the letter, though. He turned to the Transkriptionen to see exactly why he was wrong. He traced the sentence: "Obwohl Autos erlaubt sind, liegt der Fokus auf dem Ausbau des Schienennetzes." (Although cars are allowed, the focus is on expanding the rail network.) "Focus," Lukas muttered. "Not 'only'."
He checked his Schreiben (writing) prompts next. He had practiced writing a letter to a friend about a move to a new apartment. Comparing his draft to the Modelltest solutions, he realized he’d forgotten to use a Nebensatz (subordinate clause) with "weil." The coffee shop was quiet, except for the
He sighed, picked up his red pen, and made a correction. He wasn't perfect yet, but with every check of the Lösungen, the path to his B1 certificate felt a little less like a mountain and a little more like a staircase. He closed the book, took a final sip of his cold espresso, and whispered, "Nächstes Mal klappt es." (Next time, it'll work.)
Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)
Target Audience: Intermediate German learners (B1 level) preparing for the Goethe exam. Timing matters – Use a stopwatch
There are three primary sources for accurate solutions:
Avoid these traps that keep learners stuck at A2.2:
| Mistake | Consequence | Fix | |---------|------------|-----| | Marking the Lösungen into the book immediately | No learning happens | Cover answers with a sticky note | | Only memorizing multiple-choice answers | Fails on exam day with new texts | Explain why A is correct and B isn't | | Ignoring the writing example solutions | Produces A2-level letters | Rewrite the example 3 times with small changes | | Forgetting the audio scripts | Listening score stagnates | Do "script shadowing" – read aloud while listening |
If you buy the physical or eBook, the last 5-6 pages contain the official Lösungen. Caution: For writing tasks, they provide "Beispielantworten" (example answers) – but examiners expect your unique response.
The listening exercises are a crucial part of the preparation. The audio files required for the listening section are usually not on a CD anymore but are available for download via the Hueber website. The "Lösungen" section of the book contains the exact transcripts of these audio files, allowing students to read along and check what they missed.
Caret lets you back up any open document to a local MongoDB instance. Before anything is written to the database, your file content is encrypted on your machine using AES-256-GCM — the same authenticated encryption standard used by governments and financial institutions.
Your password never touches the database. It's fed through PBKDF2-SHA512 with 600,000 iterations and a random salt to derive the encryption key. Each backup gets its own salt and nonce, so even identical files produce completely different ciphertext.
Everything happens locally. No cloud, no third-party service, no network calls. You own the database, you own the password, you own the data. If you lose the password, the backups are unrecoverable by design.
Open the Backup Manager with Ctrl+B to create, browse, restore, or delete backups. It's built into the editor — no external tools required.
MongoDB is only needed if you want encrypted backups. Caret works perfectly fine without it.
Detected automatically from file extension or content.
Standard keybindings. No custom chord system to memorize.
Windows 10/11 · x64 · Free and open source.