They’re turning Notepad into what Wordpad was (or was supposed to be). Now everyone looking for the light weightiest *.txt editor must find a new tool...
They’re turning Notepad into what Wordpad was (or was supposed to be). Now everyone looking for the light weightiest *.txt editor must find a new tool...
Well, at least they brought back edit[0]
[0] https://github.com/microsoft/edit
If this was actually (pre)installed with Windows, I wouldn't mind the changes to notepad nearly as much.
While I'd love it installed by default, I still very much mind that they're ruining Notepad.
Plus this Markdown preview functionality just caused Notepad to have a Remote Code Execution Vulnerability in it.
Oh it's still pretty stupid, and I think they should have simply resurrected the Wordpad name for this, and maybe a conversion utility for opening doc/rtf files to markdown in the editor for older file support.
Agreed. Resurrecting Wordpad and making it really cool/useful would make everyone happy.
They can add as much AI and Markdown as they want to Wordpad as far as I'm concerned. Just leave my dumb featureless utility alone.
It is preinstalled. Server 2025 (even Core Edition) and Windows 11 24H2 (or 25H2, not sure)...
The problem is usually when you're using notepad, it's in some situation where you don't want to install another exe. Like you're using someone else's PC or a random one in a library or something. This needs to be built in.
So build it in Wordpad?
You can just uninstall this modern notepad. It will bring back plain old notepad.
I found when I did that I lost the ability to associate any program with .txt files; like popup errors when trying to assign a default
You can make old Notepad be the default cmd line by going to Apps > Advanced app settings > App execution aliases, and disable the Notepad setting
I like EmEditor, it has a compact ui and some useful features, and 16TB file support -- https://www.emeditor.com/
The whole point of Notepad was its bare bones simplicity. EmEditor looks like it’s loaded full of stuff, and has a subscription fee.
Assuming most people don’t need to open 16TB files, they might as well use VS Code.
I used to use scite in the early 2000's (scintilla editor), is it still around?
EDIT: yes it does and it has actually been updated yesterday.
https://www.scintilla.org/SciTEDownload.html
https://www.scintilla.org/ScintillaHistory.html
Textadept is lightweight, and more...
notepad.txt now joins calc.txt in my list of EXEs i bring from an old WinXPx64 install to all new windows installs
Probably better to get the Win 10 version if you can as it eventually got better line ending support (i.e. both LF & CRLF).
I got curious about the Wine version, if it has feature parity it may well be the best supported version of notepad right now ;)
Every few years I find some need or excuse to install Brief somewhere. I miss that editor.
I also bring in the old paint from Vista. I never liked the new ribbon-based design from later version of Windows.
… .txt? :D
Vim is The Way.
KDE's kate runs well on Windows.
It can be installed easily via chocolatey.
It's also in winget
For the absolute lightweight, there is vi, eMacs, nano, etc.
For a UI I’ve been using VSCode. It is quite quick when you disable all extensions and most settings.
> absolute lightweight
> eMacs
I love Emacs, but I don't see how a Lisp platform with a web browser, a Tetris implementation, and 4 terminal emulators (shell, term, ansi-term, eshell) can be considered 'lightweight'.
As the old saying goes, "emacs is an operating system lacking only a decent text editor".
Not so. Evil mode is a great text editor.
To be fair you can say that of anything with a scripting engine, you could have all that in vim or stripped down emacs
Anything with a scripting engine isn't lightweight compared to (classic) Notepad!
(Also, a lot of that stuff comes bundled with Emacs out-of-the-box, further disqualifying it. Having a scripting engine is one thing, but having a scripting engine along with the whole rest of the jet is something else entirely!)
Ha, fair. Lightweight in this context is relative to Notepad or any modern Windows application.
Notepad.exe used to be <200kB. Emacs is tens of megabytes
Notepad was just a wrapper around some default win32 controls. Judging alone by exe size is not right, although probably a “statically linked” notepad would still be smaller than emacs
It is right by definition. Link emacs to those controls, shed some statically linked weight, and it will also become lighter!
vi and emacs are absolutely not lightweight, let alone "absolutely lightweight".
If by vi you mean vim, then I agree, real vi is rather lite.
As someone famous said, "everything is relative" :) Compared to the new applications that have been coming out, Emacs and vim are a paragon of lightness.
I agree with you that vi is lighter than vim. I’ve seen more than a few instances of an OS just aliasing vi to vim.
On that note, why are the keybindings for vi on a “modern” Ubuntu different from fedoras? I remember having to mess with ^H in a vimrc or something to that effect to mimic the behavior I was expecting.
Sounds like the terminal (not vi) you're using has different defaults; backspace and delete are the two common keys that vary.
That makes a lot of sense. I'll do some research on different terminal behaviors. Thanks!
I'm sorry but you cannot use VS Code and lightweight in the same sentence.
Notepad++ is solid but they had a recent kerfuffle involving their security practices and the response didn't inspire much confidence. But if you turn off auto-updates then it's a good alternative if you're still on Windows.
The issue Notepad++ is having, is the same as a lot of open source projects: They don't have a ton of money, don't have a business entity, and are struggling to get/keep a software-signing key in those circumstances.
So the people taking pot shots at the developers, I guess, maybe be more specific with what they did wrong and what they should have done instead. Because if you actually understand the history/circumstances (and the fact it was a third-party hosting provider compromised), one would expect more blame on the systemic under-funding of OSS than "developers bad."
Are people wanting them to create a business, monetize Notepad++, so that they no longer have issues with hosting/certificates? I'm guessing not.
More than a small kerfuffle. A supply chain attack by a state actor, believed to be China, resulted in undetected malicious code executions from June 2025 to December 2025.
I love Notepad++ but yea, zero confidence in that dev right now. Its programma non grata on my machines at the moment.
Theyre also very political and giving them access to my machine now feels even more risky.
If you'd like a lightweight replacement, here's Kate. It's somewhere around a zed featureset, a little less.
A key benefit of it is that it's not an electron app. It's an old C++ app that's still just chuggin' along.
https://kate-editor.org/get-it/
Which response are we talking about which was problematic?
Hurting MAGA feelings or criticising Israel I'd guess.
I didn't realize until recently that the very popular Notepad++ was such a lightning rod over the years for controversy and (though I can't guarantee correlation is causation) security issues.
20260202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46851548 Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors (917 points, 543 comments)
20260203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46878338 Notepad++ supply chain attack breakdown (384 points, 198 comments)
20250630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44426049 High-Severity Vulnerability in Notepad++ (39 points, 14 comments)
20230904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37385920 Multiple Notepad++ Flaws Let Attackers Execute Arbitrary Code (83 points, 39 comments)
20230830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37320304 Buffer Overflows in Notepad++ (68 points, 61 comments)
20230829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37311068 Notepad++ v8.5.6 still vulnerable to possible arbitrary code execution (18 points, 3 comments)
20211209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29499002 StrongPity variant hides behind Notepad++ installation (45 points, 28 comments)
20191030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21395251 Notepad++ issues attacked by Chinese commenters (237 points, 110 comments)
20191030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21400526 Notepad++ repository is being spammed after “Free Uyghur” release (82 points, 36 comments)
20190317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19329330 Notepad++ drops code signing for its releases (496 points, 327 comments)
20170308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13824032 Notepad++ V 7.3.3 – Fix CIA Hacking Notepad++ Issue (1101 points, 291 comments)
20150112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8876823 Notepad ++ hacked for Je Suis Charlie comments(web archive link) (65 points, 74 comments)
All we wanted back in the day was Unix line ending support, and they would give even that.
How about a CTRL+Z that don't undo the past 11 years of changes you've done, and instead just undos one smaller change?
[dead]
notepad++ is great, though they have a dubious habit of dumping political messages on releases.
I don't have any use for Notepad++, but reading about this makes me wish I did:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad%2B%2B#Political_messag...
The possibility of software being a personal, creative, expressive endeavor (which often includes politics), something I believed in back when I was in university twenty years ago, is a feeling that's receded deeply into the past. That might be as much about me as it is about the world, but I miss it.
I think that different people want different things. It seems to me like these days the idea of software being a personal expression is in vogue more than not, but there are always going to be those who want that and those who don't.
That said, if software is a personal creative expression, one must be prepared for the possibility that some people aren't going to like what one has to say. Often when the politics angle comes up with Notepad++, people will say "it's his software project, he has the right to put in political messages if he wants" as if that somehow compels people to be ok with the political messages. The author certainly has the right to use Notepad++ as a platform for his political opinions, and I would never dream of saying otherwise. I don't want him to go to jail, or get fired by his employer, or anything like that. But I similarly have the right to decide that I don't want to see his political opinions and use another piece of software. You pick up both ends of the stick, as the old saying says.
Where is the place you'd like to see someone say "Declare variables, not war"?
On their blog I guess? Not in my text editor, that's for sure. I'm busy trying to get work done; I neither have time for nor want to hear about the author's opinions on current events.
reading about political messaging in any software should make you AVOID it, not "wishing to have it"
the moment software stops being neutral, it becomes a target
I guess this is true in a professional context - you don't want your user's or company's data somehow becoming compromised because of your choice of text editor.
But, at the same time, that's exactly the sort of thinking that's killed off that feeling I'm sentimental for. As a free human being, I don't want to live in fear of expressing my political views; and as someone who wants to view the software I make as a form of art or expression, I don't want to be afraid to express my political views through my software either. Should a writer avoid being political for fear of becoming a target? For fear of their books or readers becoming a target?
as a free human being, you can do whatever
as a program that tries to be used by others - stay in your lane, you are not an opinion cesspool, you are here to do work and let others do it too
Sublime is good too without the political rhetoric. It boggles my mind that windows users refuse the ways of vim.
Was hoping to see Sublime mentioned here. Super stable and available for nearly everything (Windows, Linux, Mac).
I remember a few years back there was an update where it would actually type the political message when you created a new text document. I abandoned it ever since.
The creator is also very selective about the type of politics he supports.
> The creator is also very selective about the type of politics he supports.
Why would someone express political messages without being selective? It’s understandable not wanting overt politics in your software, but this line is odd.
And they were running on such a shoestring deployment that N++ was hacked by the Chinese last year. I'd stick with VS Code.
> must find a new tool...
Interesting. This is not actually true anymore, even for the masses.
Nowadays everyone can just have their own tools made, "hand-tailored" with the features they want. Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like everyday-software is now only a few sentences (and a python script) away.
Please show me the few sentence prompt to create a windows 10 level notepad.exe clone that I can quickly open and use by hitting win+r
I think Dave (of Dave's Garage) did this just a few months ago... I think there were some short-comings regarding wide character support (BoM detection, etc)... but it was pretty much a working Notepad.exe implementation.
FWIW, you can also get the new Edit implementation that's built with Rust and the Windows exe is 250kb...
Thought of this immediately after reading the parent comment. I was actually pretty shocked at how seamless the whole project was.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/hey-hey-someone-on-hackerne...
Tested with python 3.10.6, Windows. It's the only version I have installed, for which I've also have installed tkinter.
Welcome to 2026. You're late.
lol calling Python lightweight:
Don't get me wrong, Python is a great many things. Easy to use, surprisingly fast for a scripting language, and well documented. But not lightweight.(( The Windows version is 110MiB after decompression. ))
while this is cool and I want to play with it myself, it's still sort of discounting the overhead here of installing python, installing tkinter, adding shortcuts to the program within Windows, etc.
Of course the barrier to creating bespoke tools is lower but it's also still a decent bit of overhead and not just "hey AI, create me a Notepad clone that works like it used to". Arguably it's still more intensive than googling "notepad clone" and just downloading n++.
> discounting the overhead
Are you moving the goalpost?
The whole thing is a bit unfair anyway. My perplexity is trained on me. It knows that I have python installed, thus it wouldn't tell me that I would need to do so. It knows I'm a programmer, it knows that I value accuracy and precision. It knows to double-check everything all by itself.
I am confident in claiming that it can get the task done regardless of the above, but its response, as is, cannot be generalized.
Yeah that’s fair.
It’s also sort of a given that anyone on this site is pretty well versed with technical stuff so maybe results would vary with Tina over in HR, for instance.
I think that sort of “last mile” problem is what agents like claw etc are supposed to help with.
Also, any reason you prefer Perplexity? Haven’t really used that one before TBH
>Are you moving the goalpost?
I mean you did originally claim that this was something that was "for the masses" and then posted a solution that only someone technical could actually use.
Not that I doubt it couldn't one shot something this simple with a .exe wrapper.
> and then posted a solution that only someone technical could actually use.
What do you mean by that? I don't understand.
I really don't think this requires someone "technical" anymore. ChatGPT might not give a python script, but a powershell script. Or possibly create a batch file.
Generally, since the default assumption is that the user is a moron, it chooses the path of least resistance, meaning that it all boils to the user being able to process written words and following instructions.
Nowadays, it seems to me that the real hurdle is the fact that far too many people can't properly read, write or express themselves anymore, let alone ask questions that might expose ... inadequacies.
> Welcome to 2026
But anyone with basic experience in Python could have written that same app in minutes 20 years ago?
I fail to see your point. That's not what this is about.
I wrote "Welcome to 2026", because the user, apparently, did not yet know that it only takes a few sentences for having it create a simple notepad clone.
If I had asked pqtyw to write me a barebones notepad clone, 20 years ago, would pqtyw have done that? For free? Within a single minute?
No!
>python
>tkinter
so you missed the part where notepad starts instantly, doesn't choke on files larger than 25KB and uses native Win32 controls ?
It only takes a few megabytes to make notepad have serious delays. Are you sure the linked program is any worse?
There's a world of difference between 25kb and 2mb
The 25KB number is almost certainly not real, or meant to be particularly accurate.