Text editors differ significantly from writing programs such as Pages: the often spartan-looking programs do without formatting. Instead of focusing on form, they focus on content, provide powerful search and replace tools, and highlight syntax elements of various programming and markup languages. A text editor that is particularly popular on Windows is Notepad++, and it is now also available for the Mac – also free and with low system requirements. The notarized app can be downloaded as a Dmg file; It requires at least an Intel Mac with macOS 11 (Big Sur) and 4 GB of RAM. It takes up 35 MB in the programs folder. The main window brings together open documents in a tab bar; The most important tools are lined up above it.
The Mac version of Notepad++ is as reserved as expected.
Growing selection of plugins
Notepad++ natively supports over 80 programming languages and markup formats, and a wide variety of encodings are also supported. Of the 160 plug-ins, 22 have already been ported for macOS; All official extensions will soon be available in the Mac version.
Independent development, same basis
For the core, the Mac version uses the same text engine called Scintilla. The project published on GitHub was initiated by Andrey Letov. It uses Objective-C++ to integrate the Windows-native program into the operating interfaces of macOS. To do this, he recruited AI help: Almost half of the GitHub project’s commits are attributed to Claude from Anthropic.
Familiar environment for switchers
The Mac version of Notepad++ has a clearly defined target group, Letov explains in the project description: users who want to permanently or temporarily switch from Windows to macOS and use their usual text editor with the same tools and keyboard shortcuts. These were previously dependent on virtualization solutions and can now take advantage of the advantages of a native Mac version. Anyone who has been using the Mac for a while will find established and feature-rich text editors for macOS in CotEditor, BEdit and many others.
