Notepads
A modern, lightweight text editor with a minimalist design.
What is Notepads and why do I care?
I have been waiting long enough for a modern Windows 10 notepad app to come so I decide to create one myself. Don’t get me wrong, Notepad++, VS Code, and Sublime are great text editors. I have used them and I will continue to use them in the future. However, they are either too heavy or less interactive. I had a desire to replace a win32 notepad.exe with a software that was lightweight and looked impressive to get things done as quickly as possible (for example, as a turnaround text editor to quickly modify config files or write some notes). Most importantly, it had to be blazingly fast and appeal to everyone.
So here comes the “Notepads”
- Fluent design with a built-in tab system.
- Blazingly fast and lightweight.
- Launch from the command line or PowerShell by typing:
notepads
ornotepads %FilePath%
. - Multi-line handwriting support.
- Built-in Markdown live preview.
- Built-in diff viewer (preview your changes).
- Session snapshot and multi-instances.
*******
Status update
[08-12-2019] Status update and KPI report
Shortcuts:
- Ctrl+N/T to create new tab.
- Ctrl+(Shift)+Tab to switch between tabs.
- Ctrl+Num(1-9) to quickly switch to specified tab.
- Ctrl+"+"/"-" to zoom font size. Ctrl+"0" to reset font size to default.
- Ctrl+L/R to change text flow direction. (LTR/RTL)
- Alt+P to toggle preview split view for Markdown file.
- Alt+D to toggle side-by-side diff viewer.
Platform limitations (UWP):
- You won't be able to save files to system folders due to UWP restriction (windows, system32, etc.).
- You cannot associate potentially harmful file types (.ps1, .bat, .xaml, etc.) with Notepads.
- If you drag a file into Notepads, file save picker will ask you to save it before closing due to UWP restriction.
- Notepads does not work well with large files; the file size limit is set to 1MB for now. I will add large file support later.
Downloads:
Please head over to the Github Releases section to download the latest release. You can also get the latest version of Notepads in the Microsoft Store.
Roadmap:
Changelog:
Disclaimer and Privacy statement:
To be 100% transparent:
- Notepads does not and will never collect user information in terms of user privacy.
- I will not track your IP.
- I will not record your typings or read any of your files created in Notepads including file name and file path.
- No typings or files will be sent to me or third parties.
I am using analytics service "AppCenter" to collect basic usage data plus some minimum telemetry to help me debug runtime errors. Here is the thread I made clear on this topic: 0x7c13#334
Feel free to review the source code or build your own version of Notepads since it is 100% open sourced.
You might notice that I work for Microsoft but Notepads is my personal project that I accomplish during free time (to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more
Contributing:
- How to contribute?
- Notepads is free and open source, if you like my work, please consider:
- Star this project on GitHub
- Leave me a review here
Dependencies and References:
Special Thanks:
- Yi Zhou - App icon designer, Notepads App Icon is greatly inspired by the new icon for Windows Terminal.
- Alexandru Sterpu - App Tester, who helped me a lot during preview/beta testing.
- Code Contributors: DanverZ, BernhardWebstudio, Csányi István, Pavel Erokhin, Sergio Pedri, Lucas Pinho B. Santos, Soumya Ranjan Mahunt, Belleve Invis
- Documentation Contributors: Craig S.
- Localization Contributors:
- [fr-FR][French]: François Rousselet, François-Joseph du Fou
- [es-ES][Spanish]: Jose Pinilla
- [zh-CN][Simplified Chinese]: lindexi, walterlv, Jackie Liu
- [hu-HU][Hungarian]: Csányi István
- [tr-TR][Turkish]: Mert Can Demir
- [ja-JP][Japanese]: Mamoru Satoh
- [de-DE][German]/[de-CH][German (Switzerland)]: Walter Wolf
- [ru-RU][Russian]: Pavel Erokhin, krlvm
- [fi-FI][Finnish]: Esa Elo
- [uk-UA][Ukrainian]: Taras Fomin aka Tarik02
- [it-IT][Italian]: Andrea Guarinoni
- [cs-CZ][Czech]: Jan Rajnoha
- [pt-BR][Brazilian]: Lucas Pinho B. Santos
- [ko-KR][Korean]: Donghyeok Tak
- [hi-IN][Hindi (India)]/[or-IN][Odia (India)]: Soumya Ranjan Mahunt
- [pl-PL][Polish]: Daxxxis