Beloved Windows text editor Notepad++ now on Mac

On MacOS, there's a wealth of beautifully elegant and powerful text editors to choose from. On Windows, there's Notepad++. And now, on MacOS, there's… Notepad++!

Notepad++ is now available as a native macOS application. It is a free, open-source source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports many programming languages and is great for general text editing. No Wine, Porting Kit, or emulation layer is needed — this is a full native port governed by the GNU General Public License.

Based on the powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ for Mac is written in Objective C++ and uses pure platform-native APIs to ensure higher execution speed and a smaller program footprint. I hope you enjoy Notepad++ on macOS as much as I enjoy bringing it to the Mac.

This project is an independent open-source community port of Notepad++ to macOS, started on March 10, 2026.

It has everything exactly as it is on Windows: great for Windows users thinking different, but perhaps not so appetizing for MacOS veterans looking for something new. Syntax highlighting, search and replace, split-view editing, language support and macro recording are in. The plugin system works and "more plugins are being migrated to MacOS as we speak."

Notepad++ is by Dan Ho, and the Mac port is maintained by Andrey Letov and others.

It's funny how in replicating every fine detail of the Windows original, you'd think it'd end up just as cluttered, and yet it looks quite handsome!

Previously:
• Cleartext is a text editor that only lets you use the 1000 most common words in English
• Behind the scenes, 'plain' text editing is unbelievably complex and weird
• Alignment chart of text editors