After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad
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Yes, it objectively is. And so are various other text editor options that are out there.
But just speaking about Notepad++, you can scale it down to a very simple text editor (like Notepad), it you can easily ramp it up to a much more feature rich one. And for me, the ability to have a vertical list of files is a big plus. As is its ability to optionally show line numbers.
So it is better because it can do more, but I assume not too too much? Because then we can also use word?
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- Keeps your progress if you exit without saving
- Supports tabs so you don't have 5 separate notepad windows open
- syntax highlighting for programming languages and markdown format
- plugin support
- can handle extremely large text files (I've opened 50gb text files and used ctrl+f to find terms and it worked fine)
- superb tools for manipulating text (e.g., use reg expressions). Super easy to make mass edits.
- dark mode support. That alone makes it superior lol
A lot of those are features of notepad.
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Fine. Notepad++ is better anyway
It's a lot more feature filled and frankly not very nice looking if all you want is a simple replacement for Notepad. Notepads (with an s) is much better imo.
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- Keeps your progress if you exit without saving
- Supports tabs so you don't have 5 separate notepad windows open
- syntax highlighting for programming languages and markdown format
- plugin support
- can handle extremely large text files (I've opened 50gb text files and used ctrl+f to find terms and it worked fine)
- superb tools for manipulating text (e.g., use reg expressions). Super easy to make mass edits.
- dark mode support. That alone makes it superior lol
Ah thanks for the first proper answer. Sounds good, I will give it a try.
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I agree, but the idea of adding AI to notepad is quite insane in its own right
I think the idea is that you can use it for reformatting small sets of data I guess.
"make all the dates in this CSV iso-8601"
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[obligatory linux boast]
I really prefer Kate to Notepad because KDE makes superior, non AI encrusted software that actually works for it's users. And it's FREE!I love Kate.
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I use Vim, actually
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I agree, but the idea of adding AI to notepad is quite insane in its own right
Adding layers to paint was what surprised me
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- Keeps your progress if you exit without saving
- Supports tabs so you don't have 5 separate notepad windows open
- syntax highlighting for programming languages and markdown format
- plugin support
- can handle extremely large text files (I've opened 50gb text files and used ctrl+f to find terms and it worked fine)
- superb tools for manipulating text (e.g., use reg expressions). Super easy to make mass edits.
- dark mode support. That alone makes it superior lol
A few of those features are available on Notepad as well, just FYI.
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A lot of those are features of notepad.
Specifically: tabs, dark mode, and retention of unsaved documents. They're apps for very different purposes, but Notepad has had some nice little updates over recent years.
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[email protected] could use more folks!
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I use Vim, actually
There always has to be one...
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So... who wants to bet that the new version of Notepad is not constantly scraping anything you type into it and feeding it into the AI, regardless of whether you're paying for this feature or not?
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A few of those features are available on Notepad as well, just FYI.
Is that Windows 11-only thing, or have I been missing a bunch of notepad features?
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Full access to notepad? So what, I need to pay to be able to toggle text wrapping or look at the about menu? It's fucking notepad.
You obviously didn't read the article, but that's OK it's a trash article anyway. Which is already indicated by the headline, since Notepad was never free, it's just included with Windows.
But your comment is disconnected from what this is really about, which essentially boils down to nothing.
Since what you are supposed to pay for is new AI features. Otherwise you can use Notepad as usual. -
A few of those features are available on Notepad as well, just FYI.
Out if curiosity, which ones? Because I don't see any of those features and am on W11...
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Notepad++ is my text editor of choice as someone who just edits the occasional file. I'm not a programmer or anything, but it's nice to have those autocomplete and syntax highlighting features for config files. Helps me keep track of stuff better when editing.
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- Keeps your progress if you exit without saving
- Supports tabs so you don't have 5 separate notepad windows open
- syntax highlighting for programming languages and markdown format
- plugin support
- can handle extremely large text files (I've opened 50gb text files and used ctrl+f to find terms and it worked fine)
- superb tools for manipulating text (e.g., use reg expressions). Super easy to make mass edits.
- dark mode support. That alone makes it superior lol
+10000 for notepad++, its he swiss army knife of file editing tools.
Adding:
Plugins: CSV being read as a small dB table you can query is a game changer. Or have a JSON plugin that auto formats and queries as well as opens the JSON in a clickable nested window.
Pinned tabs: pin important tabs, I use one as a todo list.
Search for text within files in a folder: need to find a specific bit of text in one of dozens/hundreds/thousands/millions of files somewhere? Its lightning fast and works a treat
Search and replace with regex: amazing feature, use regex patterns to find complex parts of your files and replace them with something else
Bulk operations: remove newline, replace line breaks etc
Multi format support: see line breaks from different OSs like Unix and windows and amend them
Portable install: you dont have to install it, you can use a portable versionSo much more, get it and you won't look back.
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So... who wants to bet that the new version of Notepad is not constantly scraping anything you type into it and feeding it into the AI, regardless of whether you're paying for this feature or not?
Sublime text ftw
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Adding layers to paint was what surprised me
That's actually very nice, one of the few Microsoft programs that I genuinely miss - layers are a quality of life feature that is actually really nice to have
