Henrik Sommerfeld

MacOS Alternative to Notepad++

green lizard perches on twig
Photo by Ante Hamersmit . Not exactly the Notepad++ logo, but close.

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.

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