| Notepad++ | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Notepad++ v8.9.1 onWindows 11, depictingMediaWiki 1.45.1 source code | |
| Developer | Don Ho |
| Initial release | 24 November 2003; 22 years ago (2003-11-24) |
| Stable release | |
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Windows[2] |
| Platform | IA-32,x86-64,AArch64 |
| Available in | 90 languages |
List of languages Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Aragonese, Aranese, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bengali, Bosnian, Brazilian portuguese, Breton, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Extremaduran, Persian, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kabyle, Kannada, Kazakh, Korean, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Latvian, Ligurian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Malay, Marathi, Mongolian, Norwegian, Nynorsk, Occitan, Piglatin, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Samogitian, Sardinian, Serbian, Serbian Cyrillic, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Spanish Argentinian, Swedish, Tagalog, Tajik Cyrillic, Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek, Uzbek Cyrillic, Venetian, Vietnamese, Welsh, Zulu | |
| Type | Source code editor |
| License | 2021:[a]GPL 3.0 or later[3] 2003:[b]GPL 2.0 or later[4] |
| Website | notepad-plus-plus |
| Repository | |
Notepad++ (sometimesnpp orNPP) is atext andsource code editor for use withMicrosoft Windows. It supportstabbed editing, which allows working with multiple open files in one window. The program's name comes from theC postfixincrement operator.[5]
Notepad++ is released asfree and open-source software under aGNU General Public License (GPL) 3.0 or later. The project was originallyhosted on theSourceForgesoftware repository (2003–2010), from where it was downloaded over 28 million times,[6][7] and twice won the SourceForge Community Choice Award for Best Developer Tool.[8] The project moved to TuxFamily (2010–2015), and then toGitHub (2015–present).[9] Notepad++ uses theScintilla editor component.
Notepad++ development began in September 2003 by Don Ho, a formercomputer science student ofParis Diderot University.[10][11][12] Ho first used JEXT (aJava-based text editor)[13][14] at his company but, dissatisfied with its poor performance, he began to develop a text editor written inC++ withScintilla.[12] He developed it in his spare time since the idea was rejected by his company.[12] Notepad++ was built as a Microsoft Windows application; the author considered, but rejected, the idea of usingwxWidgets toport it to theMac OS X andUnix platforms.[12]
Notepad++ was first released onSourceForge on 25 November 2003, as a Windows-only application.[10] It is based on theScintilla editor component, and is written inC++ with only Windows API (Win32) application programming interface (API) calls using only theStandard Template Library (STL) to increase performance and reduce program size.[15][16]
In January 2010 theUS government obliged US-basedopen source project hosts to deny access from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, andSyria to comply with U.S. law.[17] As a response to what the developer felt was a violation of thefree and open-source software (FOSS) philosophy, in June 2010 Notepad++ moved out of US territorial jurisdiction by releasing a version on TuxFamily, in France. Some community services of Notepad++ (such as the forums and bug tracker) remained on SourceForge until 2015 when Notepad++ left SourceForge completely.[18][19][20]
In 2011Lifehacker described Notepad++ as "The Best Programming Text Editor for Windows", stating that "if you prefer a simple, lightweight, and extensible programming plain-text editor, our first choice is the free, open-source Notepad++".[21]Lifehacker criticized itsuser interface, stating that "It is, in fact, fairly ugly. Luckily you can do a lot to customize its looks, and what it lacks in polish, it makes up for in functionality".[21]
In 2014Lifehacker readers voted Notepad++ as the "Most Popular Text Editor", with 40% of the 16,294 respondents specifying it as their most-loved editor.[22] The Lifehacker team summarized the program as being "fast, flexible, feature-packed, and completely free".[22]
In 2015Stack Overflow conducted a worldwide Developer Survey, and Notepad++ was voted as the most usedtext editor worldwide with 34.7% of the 26,086 respondents claiming to use it daily.[23] Stack Overflow noted that "The more things change, the more likely it is those things are written inJavaScript with NotePad++ on a Windows machine".[23] The 2016 survey had Notepad++ at 35.6%.[24]
In 2015, in response to thestaff hijacking of projects hosted on SourceForge, Notepad++ left SourceForge completely with the forums being moved to NodeBB and the bug tracker toGitHub.[20][25] In 2019, the website,notepad-plus-plus.org, moved toHostinger.[18][20][26]
In 2025, state-sponsored hackers (suspected to be ChineseAPT31) hijacked the update functionality for Notepad++ by compromising its hosting provider. Organizations in East Asia were targeted, redirecting their updates to malicious servers for several months to deliver malware. The issue was resolved by migrating to a more secure host and enforcing stronger update verification.[27][28][29] The mechanism of the attack involved a modification to the Notepad++ updater,gup.exe, with the modification introduced in Notepad++ version 8.8.8, where the executable obtains the latest application version fromhttps://notepad-plus-plus.org/update/getDownloadUrl.php and retrieves the update URL from a file namedgup.xml, with the retrieved file then saved to a temporary directory and executed; this connection could beTLS intercepted at theISP level, allowing the download to be redirected to any URL, and although legitimate update files use aself-signedroot certificate, the updater does not perform thorough checks for tampering. As a result,gup.exe executes a malicious payload namedupdate.exe obtained from a malicious server, containing aNSIS installer which creates the%AppData%\Bluetooth\ directory, extracts four files, sets the directory to hidden, and executesBluetoothService.exe within the resulting payload. This thensideloads a malicious DLL which loads theshellcode file into memory, and then decrypts and executes it, allowingcommand and control over the computer by an attacker using a web interface.[30][31]
Notepad++ is asource code editor. It featuressyntax highlighting,code folding and limitedautocompletion forprogramming,scripting, andmarkup languages, but notintelligent code completion or syntax checking. As such, it may properly highlight code written in a supported scheme, but whether the syntax is internally sound or compilable, cannot be verified.[23][32][33][15] As of version 7.6.3, Notepad++ can highlight the elements of 78 syntaxes:
Notepad++ recognizes threenewline representations (CR,CR+LF, andLF) and can convert between them on the fly. In addition, it supports reinterpreting plain text files in variouscharacter encodings and can convert them toASCII,UTF-8 orUCS-2. As such, it can fix plain text that seem gibberish only becausetheir character encoding is not properly detected.
Notepad++ also has features that improve plain text editing experience in general, such as:
Notepad++ has support formacros andplugins,[36] and has been remarked for its robust plugin architecture which enabled various new features to be integrated into the program.[37] Currently, over 140 compatible plugins are developed for Notepad++, 10 of which are included by default in the program.[38] The first plugin to be included in the program was"TextFX", which includes W3C validation for HTML and CSS, text sorting, character case alteration and quote handling.[39]
Notepad++ supports internationalization through XML files in an application-specific format containing all internationalized strings (dialog captions, menu titles and items, etc.) in a certain language; this file can be reloaded from the application settings. Translations to new languages can thus be written by simply editing an existing file.
Notepad++ is notable for being vocal in politics, particularly inhuman rights and support of Ukraine in theRusso-Ukrainian war.
In March 2008, the "Boycott Beijing 2008" banner was placed on Notepad++'s SourceForge.net homepage.[40] A few months later most users in China were unable to reach the SourceForge.net website from 26 June to 24 July 2008. This led to the widespread belief that China had banned SourceForge.net in retaliation for the Boycott banner.[41][42][43]
In January 2015, the Notepad++ website washacked by activists from the Fallaga Team who objected to an Easter egg endorsingJe suis Charlie.[44] The Fallaga Team has been linked toISIL and is also believed to be responsible for the 2017 hacking of websites of the BritishNational Health Service.[45]
In October 2019, Notepad++ released a version codenamed "Free Uyghur" (v7.8.1). In the release notice, the author expressed concern that hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been "subjected to political indoctrination, and sometimes even torture" in theXinjiang re-education camp. He called for "additional pressure on the Chinese government to stop their oppressive actions and crimes concerning the Uyghur people".[46] The software's dedicated site came under adistributed-denial-of-service attack and itsGitHub issue page was bombarded with nationalistic rhetoric, though it later recovered after being moved behindCloudflare's anti-DDoS service.[47][48]
In July 2020, Notepad++ released a version codenamed "Stand with Hong Kong" (v7.8.9). In the release notice, the author expressed his concern about the Chinese government implementation of theNational Security Law in Hong Kong.[49] In retaliation, mainland Chinese browsers developed byTencent (QQ Browser andWeChat's built-in browser),Alibaba (UC Browser),360 andSogou started blocking the official site'sDownload page, but not other pages.[50]
In early and mid-February 2022, Notepad++ released a version codenamed "Boycott Beijing 2022" (v8.3) and (v8.3.1). In the release notice, the author expressed his concern abouthuman rights in China, especially forUyghurs andHongkongers. He suggest his audience "not watch or pay attention to the games".[51][52]
In late February 2022, Notepad++ released a version codenamed "Declare variables, not war" (v8.3.2). In the release notice, the author condemned theRussian invasion of Ukraine and called for support forUkraine.[53] In March 2022, Notepad++ released a version codenamed "Make Apps, not war" (v8.3.3). The author continued to express his views on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[54]
In summer of 2024, Notepad++ released updates supportingTaiwan, including "Support Taiwan's Sovereignty" (v8.6.8),[55] "SupportTaiwan's Independence" (v8.6.9),[56] and "Support Taiwan's return to theUN" (v8.7).[57]
In November 2024, Notepad++ showed support for Ukraine again, with a release titled "in a world ofElon, be aZelensky" (v8.7.2),[58] and another criticism of Elon Musk with "leavingX forBluesky" (8.7.3).[59]
