I continue to use Notepad++ despite having tried every other editor and IDE under the sun. This, of course, drives every person completely insane when I explain that my "IDE" is:
- Notepad++ for editing, pretty much stock, no plugins
- command line for git and grep (Console2 or Git Bash)
- File Explorer alongside Everything [0] for navigating files
- Beyond Compare [1] for visual diff/merge
- WinSCP/PuTTY for SFTP/SSH (usually to Linux)
- Synergy [2] for sharing keyboard and mouse between Windows and MacOS
I personally enjoy being in all 3 major OS's at the same time, and find it helpful to separate concerns to their respective applications/interfaces -- it helps me keep a mental geography of "where things are" and "what tool is used for which purpose", rather than being beholden to a IDE-dictated workflow or tool that's obscured behind specific UI patterns.
That said, I'll happily use Handbrake over command-line ffmpeg for a lot of things, so obscuring behind UI isn't always a bad thing.
I admit I don't use Notepad++ to actually write anything -- I use it view large files, do complex search & replace, regex, reformat files, data manipulation, etc.
I probably use it a couple of times a week but never to write. I don't even consider it in competition with tools like VS Code, etc.
One thing I really like about software is that it can theoretically live forever.
I know bit rot is real, but with some maintenance, and even a quite small community, it can keep getting revitalized basically forever.[1]
The field is generally still young, so I look forward to good solid software just getting older and older and still working well. Makes it worth learning and internalizing.
C is in its 50s, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere (:
Part of what pains me about much modern software, with its always-online and tied-to-some-cloud-service nature, is that it tends to die. The learning you do goes to waste, when some fickle company pulls the plug in the future.
I like to build stuff that lasts, whether it's a cathedral or a bazaar, and I like to use stuff that was built in that way, too.
[1] Okay, forever is a long time. Maybe some day keyboards will be extinct, and that will make keyboard-centric software obsolete. Same could be true for screens, or even the broad architecture of computing hardware as we know it. But those changes tend to happen slowly, and there's time to adapt.
I recently looked at some log files (nothing too crazy, somewhere between 20 - 50 MB of text data) and much to my surprise the recent versions of Visual Studio Code seemed to be smoother than Notepad++.
That said, it's a nice toolbox of common text operations, like sorting lines, removing duplicates, converting case and whitespace symbols and so on. I still use it daily for similar tasks, or just some TODO files, config edits and such.
I did look for something a bit more cross platform to replace it with and CudaText caught my attention (https://cudatext.github.io/) but nothing convincing enough to use something else on my Windows computer, or switch away from Visual Studio Code or Fleet on my Linux/Mac computers.
Notepad++ is my daily driver for taking notes, todos, do pastes and use new tabs as buffers. It’s the most reliable place on my work machine, being always found how you left it off. Notepad++ and WinMerge are my two favorite tools. Integrating Winmerge with Visual Studio 2022 was a breath of fresh air, any compares pop up outside VS in a WinMerge window, could leave multiple versions open, etc. I don’t even want to start about by pet peeves with VS but many UI/UX features in it are just bad. Unfortunately I have to live with it for now.
It has served me well in those terrible times when you get a new PC at work (usually Windows) but it is so locked down by Dept of IT that one cannot load anything useful... except a few things like browser... or Notepad++
It has saved my a@@ multiple times in one-or-two large consulting companies pretending to be technically advanced.
This means Scintilla (the editor component in Notepad++, Geany, and others) is about 25. It was the foundation of my move away from proprietary editors like Visual SlickEdit, and served me well for more than a few years. I'm glad it's still around.
My 17 year old high school senior told me that the suckiest thing about their school-issued laptop is lack of Notepad++. I teared up and my hacker dad skillboard got another achievement! I told him that it has a portable install and this weekend he's getting it on via Gdrive upload. Nothing will stop better editor from showing up on school machine!
I love Notepad++. My top 2 favorite features are macro recording and its search/replace (with options for normal, extended, and regex). It's fantastic for quickly cleaning up data.
Still haven't found another editor that lets you define a project with files from all over the filesystem rather than just from a folder. And no VS Code's multi-root projects do not cut it.
Notepad++ is so based. It's a traditionally well-made native app, fast and lean, with a dense and useful interface, which is a breath of fresh air amidst a sea of Electron & Co. bloat that comprises modern apps.
Also has a nice logo for a FOSS app. Branding is important, even for FOSS, which so many unfortunately fail at. If your software creation is associated with a foot or a rat, then you're doing it wrong.
I wish it would get LSP support. There are some plugins but they seem buggy/ incomplete/ abandoned. It could be a nice lightweight alternative to VSCode.
We have it on our work laptops. It’s decent. But it does not even have markdown editing out of the box. You need to install a plugin. I cannot do that without proper rights.
Other than that it’s pretty good. Like BBEdit on a Mac.
Edit: I rather miss markdown rendering, not primarily editing. Should have been more specific.
Notepad++ was a life saver in my early days of needing to open and edit large files without having the tech literacy or familiarity required to use an actual IDE. I was a Windows "tinkerer" for a long time before learning programming and getting into engineering, and I suspect I'm not the only one on HN who got started that way. It's probably the first editor I used with line numbers, tabs / multiple view panes in one window, and customization options.
I can't say I use it as often these days, but it's still installed on my PC at home and it's a reliable tool that I think back on fondly. Without it, I might not have "leveled up" to more advanced tools later on.
There is still no real equivalent on Linux. Kate seems nice but its session management isn't ideal.
Honestly I want to take Scintilla or whatever and just add in session support, syntax highlighting and spellchecking, and then I'll have my perfect editor.
It is kinda interesting that the only software program I miss when on a non-Windows machine is an open source (and GPL of all) replacement for built-in Notepad, developed by an independent engineer.
Notepad++ was my first editor of my own choice. In the end, not something I wanted to keep around, but It's certainly something I would recommend to people who are just getting started in IT.
Is there anything similar and lightweight that is cross-platform(or at least is available both on Linux and OS X)? I am not a Windows user, so that's a secondary priority for me
To help many here understand Notepad++, would someone introduce a curious Vim user to Notepad++? Please don't make it into what is better or worse, but what capabilities does each have that the other lacks (not an exhaustive list, of course), what do they both have but implement differently, what uses are in Notepad++'s wheelhouse, etc?
I've heard of it for years, of course, but I don't really know it beyond 'GUI advanced text editor'.
Have to give PROPS to the author(s) here... been using Notepad++ since I can remember, which is probably 21 years. Probably one of, if not the first app I download on a new Win box! Congrats!
Custom syntax highlighting is my favorite when I’m doing a large creative writing project, I define rules to highlight stuff - proper nouns in-universe, key elements of the story, words I have a bad habit of overusing, etc - to leave myself little reminders and landmarks sprinkled through the text as I work on it
Thank you to it's creators. I've used Notepad++ to make a living for over a decade (front end web designer). Started to use Sublime text (when I was pushing code into the repo) but past few years just Notepad++ and Notepad to design web apps and sites.
Notepad++ when I used it the 1st time I couldn't believe a text editor could be better. Fortunately shortly after I stumbled upon sublime. V3 was a bit awkward but end of the day still a text editor.
I remember my college roommate, around 2010, using Notepad++. I assumed it was fairly old at that point given how simple and solid it looked. Way to go, Notepad++ for building something that's standing the test of time!
For cars/music, 25 years seems to be the accepted definition of classic. It's a true sign of you're getting old when the music you listened to in your teens is now considered classic. Does software have that same definition of 25 years? There's very few apps that I can think of that I still use for that long, so reaching the status of classic software is one hell of an achievement. Abandoned software should not be qualify as classic software.
I continue to use Notepad++ despite having tried every other editor and IDE under the sun. This, of course, drives every person completely insane when I explain that my "IDE" is:
- Notepad++ for editing, pretty much stock, no plugins
- command line for git and grep (Console2 or Git Bash)
- File Explorer alongside Everything [0] for navigating files
- Beyond Compare [1] for visual diff/merge
- WinSCP/PuTTY for SFTP/SSH (usually to Linux)
- Synergy [2] for sharing keyboard and mouse between Windows and MacOS
I personally enjoy being in all 3 major OS's at the same time, and find it helpful to separate concerns to their respective applications/interfaces -- it helps me keep a mental geography of "where things are" and "what tool is used for which purpose", rather than being beholden to a IDE-dictated workflow or tool that's obscured behind specific UI patterns.
That said, I'll happily use Handbrake over command-line ffmpeg for a lot of things, so obscuring behind UI isn't always a bad thing.
Anyways, HUGE RESPECT to Notepad++!
[0] https://www.voidtools.com
[1] https://www.scootersoftware.com
[2] https://symless.com/synergy
I admit I don't use Notepad++ to actually write anything -- I use it view large files, do complex search & replace, regex, reformat files, data manipulation, etc.
I probably use it a couple of times a week but never to write. I don't even consider it in competition with tools like VS Code, etc.
One thing I really like about software is that it can theoretically live forever. I know bit rot is real, but with some maintenance, and even a quite small community, it can keep getting revitalized basically forever.[1]
The field is generally still young, so I look forward to good solid software just getting older and older and still working well. Makes it worth learning and internalizing.
C is in its 50s, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere (:
Part of what pains me about much modern software, with its always-online and tied-to-some-cloud-service nature, is that it tends to die. The learning you do goes to waste, when some fickle company pulls the plug in the future.
I like to build stuff that lasts, whether it's a cathedral or a bazaar, and I like to use stuff that was built in that way, too.
[1] Okay, forever is a long time. Maybe some day keyboards will be extinct, and that will make keyboard-centric software obsolete. Same could be true for screens, or even the broad architecture of computing hardware as we know it. But those changes tend to happen slowly, and there's time to adapt.
I recently looked at some log files (nothing too crazy, somewhere between 20 - 50 MB of text data) and much to my surprise the recent versions of Visual Studio Code seemed to be smoother than Notepad++.
That said, it's a nice toolbox of common text operations, like sorting lines, removing duplicates, converting case and whitespace symbols and so on. I still use it daily for similar tasks, or just some TODO files, config edits and such.
I did look for something a bit more cross platform to replace it with and CudaText caught my attention (https://cudatext.github.io/) but nothing convincing enough to use something else on my Windows computer, or switch away from Visual Studio Code or Fleet on my Linux/Mac computers.
Notepad++ is my daily driver for taking notes, todos, do pastes and use new tabs as buffers. It’s the most reliable place on my work machine, being always found how you left it off. Notepad++ and WinMerge are my two favorite tools. Integrating Winmerge with Visual Studio 2022 was a breath of fresh air, any compares pop up outside VS in a WinMerge window, could leave multiple versions open, etc. I don’t even want to start about by pet peeves with VS but many UI/UX features in it are just bad. Unfortunately I have to live with it for now.
I LOVE Notepad++ !!
It has served me well in those terrible times when you get a new PC at work (usually Windows) but it is so locked down by Dept of IT that one cannot load anything useful... except a few things like browser... or Notepad++
It has saved my a@@ multiple times in one-or-two large consulting companies pretending to be technically advanced.
<3 <3
This means Scintilla (the editor component in Notepad++, Geany, and others) is about 25. It was the foundation of my move away from proprietary editors like Visual SlickEdit, and served me well for more than a few years. I'm glad it's still around.
My 17 year old high school senior told me that the suckiest thing about their school-issued laptop is lack of Notepad++. I teared up and my hacker dad skillboard got another achievement! I told him that it has a portable install and this weekend he's getting it on via Gdrive upload. Nothing will stop better editor from showing up on school machine!
I've been using it for many many years. Never paid a dime. Just donated 21 Euros, €1 per year.
If anyone else is so inclined, I'll save you the search: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/donate/
(unaffiliated with the author, admire old-fashioned people who don't switch from free to paid)
Congrats to Notepad++, but this article reads like AI spam to me
I love Notepad++. My top 2 favorite features are macro recording and its search/replace (with options for normal, extended, and regex). It's fantastic for quickly cleaning up data.
Still haven't found another editor that lets you define a project with files from all over the filesystem rather than just from a folder. And no VS Code's multi-root projects do not cut it.
Notepad++ is so based. It's a traditionally well-made native app, fast and lean, with a dense and useful interface, which is a breath of fresh air amidst a sea of Electron & Co. bloat that comprises modern apps.
Also has a nice logo for a FOSS app. Branding is important, even for FOSS, which so many unfortunately fail at. If your software creation is associated with a foot or a rat, then you're doing it wrong.
I am the owner of TimeCamp app that can track usage of desktop apps.
75% of office workers that use Google Chrome use Notepad++ on Windows.
As a Mac user, Notepad++ is the only thing I miss from the Windows ecosystem.
One of my favourite features in n++ is to enable "show all characters". Discovered a lot of weird end-of-line and bom issues like that
I wish it would get LSP support. There are some plugins but they seem buggy/ incomplete/ abandoned. It could be a nice lightweight alternative to VSCode.
I can finally take it out for drinks as a thank you.
We have it on our work laptops. It’s decent. But it does not even have markdown editing out of the box. You need to install a plugin. I cannot do that without proper rights.
Other than that it’s pretty good. Like BBEdit on a Mac.
Edit: I rather miss markdown rendering, not primarily editing. Should have been more specific.
Notepad++ was a life saver in my early days of needing to open and edit large files without having the tech literacy or familiarity required to use an actual IDE. I was a Windows "tinkerer" for a long time before learning programming and getting into engineering, and I suspect I'm not the only one on HN who got started that way. It's probably the first editor I used with line numbers, tabs / multiple view panes in one window, and customization options.
I can't say I use it as often these days, but it's still installed on my PC at home and it's a reliable tool that I think back on fondly. Without it, I might not have "leveled up" to more advanced tools later on.
There is still no real equivalent on Linux. Kate seems nice but its session management isn't ideal.
Honestly I want to take Scintilla or whatever and just add in session support, syntax highlighting and spellchecking, and then I'll have my perfect editor.
It is kinda interesting that the only software program I miss when on a non-Windows machine is an open source (and GPL of all) replacement for built-in Notepad, developed by an independent engineer.
Notepad++ was my first editor of my own choice. In the end, not something I wanted to keep around, but It's certainly something I would recommend to people who are just getting started in IT.
Is there anything similar and lightweight that is cross-platform(or at least is available both on Linux and OS X)? I am not a Windows user, so that's a secondary priority for me
Does anybody know if the search window is still a new popup window?
Something that always made me prefer to go use other editors. Or perhaps if incremental search support regular expressions?
To help many here understand Notepad++, would someone introduce a curious Vim user to Notepad++? Please don't make it into what is better or worse, but what capabilities does each have that the other lacks (not an exhaustive list, of course), what do they both have but implement differently, what uses are in Notepad++'s wheelhouse, etc?
I've heard of it for years, of course, but I don't really know it beyond 'GUI advanced text editor'.
NotePad++ and TaskWarrior are the only software projects I have ever donated money to. I wonder if that says more about me, or about them.
Have to give PROPS to the author(s) here... been using Notepad++ since I can remember, which is probably 21 years. Probably one of, if not the first app I download on a new Win box! Congrats!
One of the things I'm most proud of developing is dark mode for notepad++, even though it was a relatively simple contribution.
Custom syntax highlighting is my favorite when I’m doing a large creative writing project, I define rules to highlight stuff - proper nouns in-universe, key elements of the story, words I have a bad habit of overusing, etc - to leave myself little reminders and landmarks sprinkled through the text as I work on it
It is a great piece of software. I use it often.
I use it every day. Thanks Notepad++ team!
Thank you to it's creators. I've used Notepad++ to make a living for over a decade (front end web designer). Started to use Sublime text (when I was pushing code into the repo) but past few years just Notepad++ and Notepad to design web apps and sites.
Notepad++ when I used it the 1st time I couldn't believe a text editor could be better. Fortunately shortly after I stumbled upon sublime. V3 was a bit awkward but end of the day still a text editor.
I remember my college roommate, around 2010, using Notepad++. I assumed it was fairly old at that point given how simple and solid it looked. Way to go, Notepad++ for building something that's standing the test of time!
When I use windows npp was 1) my editor of choice and 2) my scratchpad of choice.
I would just keep pressing ctrl+n whenever I needed a fresh file and never close anything.
I use notepad++ mostly just as a text note keeper. I open a new file, write something in it, and it will stay there forever, no need to save it.
Has anyone built a co-pilot-like plugin for Notepad++ yet? Before reading this post, I wasn't even aware that Notepad++ had plugins.
For cars/music, 25 years seems to be the accepted definition of classic. It's a true sign of you're getting old when the music you listened to in your teens is now considered classic. Does software have that same definition of 25 years? There's very few apps that I can think of that I still use for that long, so reaching the status of classic software is one hell of an achievement. Abandoned software should not be qualify as classic software.
Great little editor. Best thing to happen to Windows.
I say it as a Mac user. It is the one thing I miss after switching away from Windows.
I moved to Notepad++ after Brief mainly because of proper column select. This is just so handy when you need it.
I still use this on my work computer. The second Zed releases their Windows port though, its as good as gone.
On Windows, I uninstalled notepad+ wordpad.
Quick editing for everything with Notepad++ and Plugins.
Fond memories. Look up also Crimson Editor from the same period, great editor.