4 ms·

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

35 points by Brajeshwar 6mo ago

sghiassy 6mo 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 6mo 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?
  - andsoitis 6mo ago
    Excellent documentation in Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
    - embedding-shape 6mo ago
      Excellent resource for general UX guidelines, some apply to cross-platform apps, some not so much. I was mainly looking for a Apple/macOS-specific guidelines, but I'm guessing they're mixed in there with everything else. Thanks though, very helpful!
  - WillAdams 6mo ago
    Use the native text objects --- in particular, this will get you emacs style editing keyboard shortcuts Support drag-drop Support Services --- bonus points for implementing core functionality as a Service and making it available thus
  - skrrtww 6mo ago
    The most important thing is probably to use native UI controls, either AppKit or SwiftUI, rather than Qt or other frameworks, even those that espouse the use of native controls. That will get you a lot of things for free, generally. Don't install invasive "helpers" or login items in weird locations; don't ask for huge amounts of system permissions without an appropriate introductory flow for your application, explaining what it needs to do before trying to install or get permission for something. Bundle your dependencies appropriately; don't go fetch weird stuff post-install, the application should be designed so that everything is already there in the bundle. Put application data in the idiomatic locations; ~/Library/Application Support, ~/Library/Preferences, etc. Carefully consider what keyboard shortcuts your application uses; if you use the Escape key for something, or modifier keys, make sure it does something that makes sense on the platform and doesn't conflict with other shortcuts. Don't bundle Chromium. Generally: Respect the user as much as possible. Things should "just work." If there's a situation where it doesn't or something feels "odd", you should do whatever you reasonably can to fix that.
    - embedding-shape 6mo ago
      That first part is a no-go, as the top concern for me is to have consistent UI across three platforms, so it won't look native, and that's a conscious choice, even with the tradeoffs. It's a native cross-platform application, fully compiled, just one binary with a sidebar archive, so Chrome, post-install fetches and other similarly "weird" desktop experiences are already avoided :) Thanks a lot for the extensive description of your expectations in general though, it's very helpful and I'll put it to good use!
- vadansky 6mo 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.
- JohnTHaller 6mo ago
  > closing the window, quits the app I've always hated this about macOS. And my main laptop is a macBook Air M3 15. The majority of my friends that use macOS have no idea how to quit an app. Nearly all think closing all the windows quits it. A lot of issues with a lot of apps can be fixed by quitting them and opening them up again. I help a ton of theater techs at a local improv theater. I finally gave up with most of them and told them to just reboot as a first step to fixing issues before continuing other troubleshooting steps.
DeathArrow 6mo 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 6mo ago
  Sublime Text. The elder and chief of them all. The inspirer.
  - tdsanchez 6mo ago
    Bbedit is better than Sublime and is arguably more refined. I use it and Bbedit and vi.
    - nneonneo 6mo 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.
  - moron4hire 6mo ago
    "The inspirer" huh? So Sublime Text went back in time 5 years and inspired Notepad++?
  - delfinom 6mo ago
    To burst your bubble, Notepad++ is the elder to Sublime Text by 5 years.
  - bananamogul 6mo ago
    Zed. The newcomer. The liberator.
theanonymousone 6mo ago
This was on HN a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964 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 6mo ago
  And domain is different than original Notepad++, now it makes sense.
  - trinix912 6mo 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.
- veverkap 6mo ago
  https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringement/ https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringemen... Don Ho (original author of Notepad++) is not happy.
alsetmusic 6mo 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 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - layer8 6mo ago
    With that kind of brain damage, you might very well not appreciate it anymore. ;)
    - fluoridation 6mo ago
      No, I would.
  - tartoran 6mo 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.
tdsanchez 6mo ago
Mac graybeards everywhere are snickering knowing that most people are UNAWARE of Bbedit. https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/ https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/
- NoSalt 6mo ago
  When I was a Mac guy, I LOVED BBedit! I purchased the full-blown package.
- big_toast 6mo ago
  I've been aware of Bbedit but never really used it. Are there things it does better than more recent editors or is it more of a devil you know? Like a WordPerfect situation.
anonthrownaway 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
    Good point. I forgot that I had to do that...
ChrisArchitect 6mo ago
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964
LeCompteSftware 6mo 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47917939
NoSalt 6mo ago
Notepad++ is one of the BEST things to ever happen to Windows.
veverkap 6mo ago
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringement/ https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringemen... Don Ho (original author of Notepad++) is not happy.
andsoitis 6mo ago
Fake, see Notepad++ creator's follow-up: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringement/ https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringemen...
virus1254 6mo ago
echo off :x start explorar start notepad start mspaint start control goto x

35 points by Brajeshwar 6mo 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 6mo 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?
- andsoitis 6mo ago
  Excellent documentation in Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    Excellent resource for general UX guidelines, some apply to cross-platform apps, some not so much. I was mainly looking for a Apple/macOS-specific guidelines, but I'm guessing they're mixed in there with everything else. Thanks though, very helpful!
- WillAdams 6mo ago
  Use the native text objects --- in particular, this will get you emacs style editing keyboard shortcuts Support drag-drop Support Services --- bonus points for implementing core functionality as a Service and making it available thus
- skrrtww 6mo ago
  The most important thing is probably to use native UI controls, either AppKit or SwiftUI, rather than Qt or other frameworks, even those that espouse the use of native controls. That will get you a lot of things for free, generally. Don't install invasive "helpers" or login items in weird locations; don't ask for huge amounts of system permissions without an appropriate introductory flow for your application, explaining what it needs to do before trying to install or get permission for something. Bundle your dependencies appropriately; don't go fetch weird stuff post-install, the application should be designed so that everything is already there in the bundle. Put application data in the idiomatic locations; ~/Library/Application Support, ~/Library/Preferences, etc. Carefully consider what keyboard shortcuts your application uses; if you use the Escape key for something, or modifier keys, make sure it does something that makes sense on the platform and doesn't conflict with other shortcuts. Don't bundle Chromium. Generally: Respect the user as much as possible. Things should "just work." If there's a situation where it doesn't or something feels "odd", you should do whatever you reasonably can to fix that.
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    That first part is a no-go, as the top concern for me is to have consistent UI across three platforms, so it won't look native, and that's a conscious choice, even with the tradeoffs. It's a native cross-platform application, fully compiled, just one binary with a sidebar archive, so Chrome, post-install fetches and other similarly "weird" desktop experiences are already avoided :) Thanks a lot for the extensive description of your expectations in general though, it's very helpful and I'll put it to good use!
vadansky 6mo 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.
JohnTHaller 6mo ago
> closing the window, quits the app I've always hated this about macOS. And my main laptop is a macBook Air M3 15. The majority of my friends that use macOS have no idea how to quit an app. Nearly all think closing all the windows quits it. A lot of issues with a lot of apps can be fixed by quitting them and opening them up again. I help a ton of theater techs at a local improv theater. I finally gave up with most of them and told them to just reboot as a first step to fixing issues before continuing other troubleshooting steps.

DeathArrow 6mo 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 6mo ago
Sublime Text. The elder and chief of them all. The inspirer.
- tdsanchez 6mo ago
  Bbedit is better than Sublime and is arguably more refined. I use it and Bbedit and vi.
  - nneonneo 6mo 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.
- moron4hire 6mo ago
  "The inspirer" huh? So Sublime Text went back in time 5 years and inspired Notepad++?
- delfinom 6mo ago
  To burst your bubble, Notepad++ is the elder to Sublime Text by 5 years.
- bananamogul 6mo ago
  Zed. The newcomer. The liberator.

theanonymousone 6mo ago

This was on HN a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964 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 6mo ago
And domain is different than original Notepad++, now it makes sense.
- trinix912 6mo 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.
veverkap 6mo ago
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringement/ https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringemen... Don Ho (original author of Notepad++) is not happy.

alsetmusic 6mo 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 6mo ago
[flagged]
- layer8 6mo ago
  With that kind of brain damage, you might very well not appreciate it anymore. ;)
  - fluoridation 6mo ago
    No, I would.
- tartoran 6mo 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.

tdsanchez 6mo ago

Mac graybeards everywhere are snickering knowing that most people are UNAWARE of Bbedit. https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/ https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/

NoSalt 6mo ago
When I was a Mac guy, I LOVED BBedit! I purchased the full-blown package.
big_toast 6mo ago
I've been aware of Bbedit but never really used it. Are there things it does better than more recent editors or is it more of a devil you know? Like a WordPerfect situation.

anonthrownaway 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
  Good point. I forgot that I had to do that...

ChrisArchitect 6mo ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964

LeCompteSftware 6mo 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47917939

NoSalt 6mo ago

Notepad++ is one of the BEST things to ever happen to Windows.

veverkap 6mo ago

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringement/ https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringemen... Don Ho (original author of Notepad++) is not happy.

andsoitis 6mo ago

Fake, see Notepad++ creator's follow-up: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringement/ https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringemen...

virus1254 6mo ago

echo off :x start explorar start notepad start mspaint start control goto x