Notepad++ Code Editor Comes to Mac After 20-Year Wait

(macrumors.com)

30 points | by Brajeshwar 2 hours ago

9 comments

  • tdsanchez 1 hour ago
    Mac graybeards everywhere are snickering knowing that most people are UNAWARE of Bbedit.

    https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/

    • NoSalt 1 hour ago
      When I was a Mac guy, I LOVED BBedit! I purchased the full-blown package.
  • theanonymousone 1 hour ago
    This was on HN a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964

    , and there it was mentioned that it is __not__ an official port and has nothing to do with the original Notepad++ author!

    • stanac 1 hour ago
      And domain is different than original Notepad++, now it makes sense.
      • trinix912 1 hour ago
        Different yet similar enough to make it seem legit at first. The only "giveaway" for me was the website looking like any other vibecoded SaaS website. Not a good sign for me personally.
  • alsetmusic 1 hour ago
    Yeah, that's not gonna hit. Non-native UI in an app that no Mac plain-text user asked for. I love Sublime, but TextMate was once king. There are already plenty of good options. I also love VIM for saving test to specific locations while I'm on the command line (I have an `sb` alias for Sublime but I don't want to switch away from my terminal window unless the corpus is large or complex).
    • fluoridation 1 hour ago
      >an app that no Mac plain-text user asked for

      I mean, if I got brain damage and decided to switch from Windows to OSX, I'd appreciate the option of being able to continue using Notepad++.

      • tartoran 45 minutes ago
        As a daily Notepad++ user for 20 years I agree, these kinds of ports to Mac make it easier for people to jump ship.
      • layer8 1 hour ago
        With that kind of brain damage, you might very well not appreciate it anymore. ;)
  • sghiassy 2 hours ago
    Tried it out, still doesn’t feel “native”

    - cant drag a file to the dock icon to open it

    - closing the window, quits the app

    Didn’t test much, but I wish the team the best of luck! It’s a cool project

    • embedding-shape 1 hour ago
      As someone who is currently building a native macOS application (cross-platform actually), but haven't used macOS as my "main OS" for more than a decade, what's the most important things to make desktop applications "feel native" on macOS?
    • vadansky 1 hour ago
      I've been using Notepad Next, it supports leaving all your tabs open when you close the window which is the main feature I need. But I do miss the plugins.
  • NoSalt 1 hour ago
    Notepad++ is one of the BEST things to ever happen to Windows.
  • anonthrownaway 1 hour ago
    >The only difference is that the menus, dialogs, file pickers, keyboard shortcuts, and windowing all use native macOS Cocoa APIs.

    Why would I want native macOS dialogs where the save as dialog can only show 32 characters on the screen at once? I use LibreOffice on Mac mostly because it allows me to use their dialogs instead of the crap macOS ones...

    • nneonneo 1 hour ago
      One big reason is sandboxing - the native dialogs can view the entire filesystem hierarchy and automatically grant access to selected resources to the calling app. Non-native dialogs are restricted to whatever the app has access to, which means you often have to give the apps Full Disk Access to make them work properly.
      • anonthrownaway 1 hour ago
        Good point. I forgot that I had to do that...
  • LeCompteSftware 1 hour ago
    This story is so irresponsible.

    >> Notepad++ for macOS is maintained by Andrey Letov, who wrote the Objective-C++ Cocoa UI that replaces Notepad++'s Win32 front-end. The app is available to download from the Notepad++ website.

    That is not the Notepad++ website! It's some other website. I understand that this is a fairly legitimate and professional port. But this framing is unacceptable. It's especially grating considering "Notepad++" is trademarked in France: https://data.inpi.fr/marques/FR5133202 [1]. The software is GPL but that doesn't mean you can slap the trademark on any derived codebase - legally problematic in France, but it's disrespectful worldwide. The Mac port really should have been released under a similar but clearly distinct name, and MacRumors should have been way more responsible about framing the story.

    [1] via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47917939

  • DeathArrow 1 hour ago
    Wow! As a heavy Notepad++ on Windows I am really happy. I haven't found anything to replace Notepad++ on Mac for me.
    • larodi 1 hour ago
      Sublime Text. The elder and chief of them all. The inspirer.
      • tdsanchez 1 hour ago
        Bbedit is better than Sublime and is arguably more refined.

        I use it and Bbedit and vi.

        • nneonneo 1 hour ago
          BBEdit is wonderful. I got hooked by TextWrangler and eventually bit the bullet to upgrade, and it was a great decision.

          I’ve used Sublime (3 and 4), VSCode, Notepad++, vi, etc.; even made some plugins for Sublime, and I still vastly prefer BBEdit.

      • bananamogul 1 hour ago
        Zed. The newcomer. The liberator.
      • delfinom 1 hour ago
        To burst your bubble, Notepad++ is the elder to Sublime Text by 5 years.
      • moron4hire 1 hour ago
        "The inspirer" huh? So Sublime Text went back in time 5 years and inspired Notepad++?
  • ChrisArchitect 1 hour ago