An endless library of web pages nobody wrote. Nearly all of them are nonsense, but every one is valid HTML.
Saved pages stay in this browser. Nothing leaves your device.
The pages you reach by following links, until you close this tab.
In a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, a library holds every book that could ever be written. Almost all of them are gibberish, but somewhere on the shelves is every great novel too. libraryofbabel.info built that idea for text. This site does the same for web pages, with one added rule: every page has to be valid HTML.
Nothing is stored. Each address is really one very large number, and that number is turned into a page one small decision at a time. Each decision can only choose something HTML allows at that point, so a broken page can't be produced.
It also works backwards: give it a page and it works out the number. So every page has exactly one address, and every address opens the same page for everyone.
The hexagon, wall, shelf, volume and page are that number split up to look like a place in the library, as in the story. Longer pages have longer hexagon names, and there is no last page. The v1 at the start of an address is the version of the library, so links can keep working if the library changes.
Pages tend to look like websites, with a header, navigation, a footer and their own colours, and their text is mostly real words in a meaningless order. That only makes those pages more common. Stranger ones are still on the shelves.
Follow links. Links never leave the library, even when they look like they go to a real website. Each one leads to another page here, and the same link always leads to the same page.
Find your own words. Search takes a random page, adds your words to its text and finds the address of the result. That page was always in the library, and searching again finds another. The highlight isn't part of the page, but a link you copy keeps it.
Look up a page. Paste in some HTML to get its address.
Go full screen. See a page by itself, filling this tab, and keep following its links. Press Esc to come back. A link copied in full screen opens the same way.
Save pages. Saved pages stay in your browser and never leave your device.
The library covers much of HTML, but not all of it. Pages can't contain scripts or style sheets, and only some inline styles are available. Images have to be embedded in the page, so a page can never load anything from the internet. If you look up a page that uses anything else, you get the closest page in the library and a list of what changed.
This site isn't affiliated with libraryofbabel.info.