MacOS Alternative to Notepad++
Having switched from Windows to Mac quite recently, there is one application in particular that I’m missing – Notepad++.
After trying Notes and Stickes, Brackets and a bunch of others, I had to rethink what I was actually using Notepad++ for and which characteristics I was appreciating the most.
What I was looking for
- Paste text unformatted
- Plain text by default/only
- Saves automatically
- Free of charge
I concluded that I used Notepad++ for short snippets of text where the low barrier to entry was key. Quickly opening the app and pasting something; or writing a text for a web form that I suspect will just reload and loose my text.
Surprisingly many text editing tools don’t paste unformatted text by default. The common macOS key combination to paste unformatted seems to be ⌥ ⇧ ⌘ V (try doing that with one hand!). Both Stickes and Notes also change single quote ('
) to some other character ( ‘ ), which messes up my Cypher queries.
I already use a heavy-weight app/service for my notes (OneNote) an several windows of VS Code for coding, so I wanted something else for these kind of quick notes.
What I was NOT looking for
- An editor that greets me with a login form
- Todos, reminders or other feature bloat
👑 Best so far
Standard Notes is my choice for now, installable by brew cask install standard-notes
.
Any suggestions that you like is welcome, please comment.