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Comment by Longhanks | Hacker News Reader

They’re turning Notepad into what Wordpad was (or was supposed to be). Now everyone looking for the light weightiest *.txt editor must find a new tool...

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Well, at least they brought back edit[0]

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/edit

If this was actually (pre)installed with Windows, I wouldn't mind the changes to notepad nearly as much.

While I'd love it installed by default, I still very much mind that they're ruining Notepad.

Plus this Markdown preview functionality just caused Notepad to have a Remote Code Execution Vulnerability in it.

Oh it's still pretty stupid, and I think they should have simply resurrected the Wordpad name for this, and maybe a conversion utility for opening doc/rtf files to markdown in the editor for older file support.

Agreed. Resurrecting Wordpad and making it really cool/useful would make everyone happy.

They can add as much AI and Markdown as they want to Wordpad as far as I'm concerned. Just leave my dumb featureless utility alone.

It is preinstalled. Server 2025 (even Core Edition) and Windows 11 24H2 (or 25H2, not sure)...

Edit is unironically one of my favorite text editors these days. It opens incredibly fast compared to everything else I use, it's easy to use, works fine on Linux. It's not going to replace emacs or VS Code, but it's incredibly handy for basic editing chores.

Have you tried Micro? https://micro-editor.github.io/

If you don’t need to render rich text and want a plain text editor then TUIs are the least likely to get a bunch of dumb features

But the rest of QBASIC is missing.

Notepad++ is solid but they had a recent kerfuffle involving their security practices and the response didn't inspire much confidence. But if you turn off auto-updates then it's a good alternative if you're still on Windows.

I love Notepad++ but yea, zero confidence in that dev right now. Its programma non grata on my machines at the moment.

Theyre also very political and giving them access to my machine now feels even more risky.

If you'd like a lightweight replacement, here's Kate. It's somewhere around a zed featureset, a little less.

A key benefit of it is that it's not an electron app. It's an old C++ app that's still just chuggin' along.

https://kate-editor.org/get-it/

Which response are we talking about which was problematic?

Hurting MAGA feelings or criticising Israel I'd guess.

I'm worried a political activist might go off the rails at some point for whatever their cause is and I have their software running on my computer... I don't want to be part of someone else's crusade.

The issue Notepad++ is having, is the same as a lot of open source projects: They don't have a ton of money, don't have a business entity, and are struggling to get/keep a software-signing key in those circumstances.

So the people taking pot shots at the developers, I guess, maybe be more specific with what they did wrong and what they should have done instead. Because if you actually understand the history/circumstances (and the fact it was a third-party hosting provider compromised), one would expect more blame on the systemic under-funding of OSS than "developers bad."

Are people wanting them to create a business, monetize Notepad++, so that they no longer have issues with hosting/certificates? I'm guessing not.

And yet notepad++ is installed by default on millions of development machines across the globe. This one of those cases that Microsoft should take over the project, keep as open source and give it proper prime time attention.

I didn't realize until recently that the very popular Notepad++ was such a lightning rod over the years for controversy and (though I can't guarantee correlation is causation) security issues.

20260202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46851548 Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors (917 points, 543 comments)

20260203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46878338 Notepad++ supply chain attack breakdown (384 points, 198 comments)

20250630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44426049 High-Severity Vulnerability in Notepad++ (39 points, 14 comments)

20230904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37385920 Multiple Notepad++ Flaws Let Attackers Execute Arbitrary Code (83 points, 39 comments)

20230830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37320304 Buffer Overflows in Notepad++ (68 points, 61 comments)

20230829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37311068 Notepad++ v8.5.6 still vulnerable to possible arbitrary code execution (18 points, 3 comments)

20211209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29499002 StrongPity variant hides behind Notepad++ installation (45 points, 28 comments)

20191030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21395251 Notepad++ issues attacked by Chinese commenters (237 points, 110 comments)

20191030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21400526 Notepad++ repository is being spammed after “Free Uyghur” release (82 points, 36 comments)

20190317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19329330 Notepad++ drops code signing for its releases (496 points, 327 comments)

20170308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13824032 Notepad++ V 7.3.3 – Fix CIA Hacking Notepad++ Issue (1101 points, 291 comments)

20150112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8876823 Notepad ++ hacked for Je Suis Charlie comments(web archive link) (65 points, 74 comments)

More than a small kerfuffle. A supply chain attack by a state actor, believed to be China, resulted in undetected malicious code executions from June 2025 to December 2025.

You can just uninstall this modern notepad. It will bring back plain old notepad.

I found when I did that I lost the ability to associate any program with .txt files; like popup errors when trying to assign a default

You can make old Notepad be the default cmd line by going to Apps > Advanced app settings > App execution aliases, and disable the Notepad setting

The problem is usually when you're using notepad, it's in some situation where you don't want to install another exe. Like you're using someone else's PC or a random one in a library or something. This needs to be built in.

So build it in Wordpad?

notepad.txt now joins calc.txt in my list of EXEs i bring from an old WinXPx64 install to all new windows installs

I also bring in the old paint from Vista. I never liked the new ribbon-based design from later version of Windows.

Probably better to get the Win 10 version if you can as it eventually got better line ending support (i.e. both LF & CRLF).

I got curious about the Wine version, if it has feature parity it may well be the best supported version of notepad right now ;)

If not anything else, I guess it could be added :) Makes me wonder though if that's a limitation of text boxes in Windows (so a translation will need to be made during loading/saving).

Every few years I find some need or excuse to install Brief somewhere. I miss that editor.

… .txt? :D

While I probably haven't played either in a decade, I bring sol.exe and winmine.exe on general principle, as both had their "Copilot in Notepad" shark-jumping moments all the way back in Windows 8 with the introduction of achievements and in-app purchases.

KDE's kate runs well on Windows.

It can be installed easily via chocolatey.

It's also in winget

I used to use scite in the early 2000's (scintilla editor), is it still around?

EDIT: yes it does and it has actually been updated yesterday.

https://www.scintilla.org/SciTEDownload.html

https://www.scintilla.org/ScintillaHistory.html

All we wanted back in the day was Unix line ending support, and they would give even that.

How about a CTRL+Z that don't undo the past 11 years of changes you've done, and instead just undos one smaller change?

I like EmEditor, it has a compact ui and some useful features, and 16TB file support -- https://www.emeditor.com/

The whole point of Notepad was its bare bones simplicity. EmEditor looks like it’s loaded full of stuff, and has a subscription fee.

Assuming most people don’t need to open 16TB files, they might as well use VS Code.

You're not wrong, and I could have elaborated. While loaded with stuff, I find the ui can be pared down, and has a similar load time and screen space as notepad.

The subscription isn't awesome, but it works fine without it, and doesn't pester alot

For the absolute lightweight, there is vi, eMacs, nano, etc.

For a UI I’ve been using VSCode. It is quite quick when you disable all extensions and most settings.

> absolute lightweight

> eMacs

I love Emacs, but I don't see how a Lisp platform with a web browser, a Tetris implementation, and 4 terminal emulators (shell, term, ansi-term, eshell) can be considered 'lightweight'.

Ha, fair. Lightweight in this context is relative to Notepad or any modern Windows application.

Notepad.exe used to be <200kB. Emacs is tens of megabytes

Notepad was just a wrapper around some default win32 controls. Judging alone by exe size is not right, although probably a “statically linked” notepad would still be smaller than emacs

It is right by definition. Link emacs to those controls, shed some statically linked weight, and it will also become lighter!

To be fair you can say that of anything with a scripting engine, you could have all that in vim or stripped down emacs

Anything with a scripting engine isn't lightweight compared to (classic) Notepad!

(Also, a lot of that stuff comes bundled with Emacs out-of-the-box, further disqualifying it. Having a scripting engine is one thing, but having a scripting engine along with the whole rest of the jet is something else entirely!)

As the old saying goes, "emacs is an operating system lacking only a decent text editor".

Not so. Evil mode is a great text editor.

vi and emacs are absolutely not lightweight, let alone "absolutely lightweight".

If by vi you mean vim, then I agree, real vi is rather lite.

As someone famous said, "everything is relative" :) Compared to the new applications that have been coming out, Emacs and vim are a paragon of lightness.

I agree with you that vi is lighter than vim. I’ve seen more than a few instances of an OS just aliasing vi to vim.

On that note, why are the keybindings for vi on a “modern” Ubuntu different from fedoras? I remember having to mess with ^H in a vimrc or something to that effect to mimic the behavior I was expecting.

Sounds like the terminal (not vi) you're using has different defaults; backspace and delete are the two common keys that vary.

That makes a lot of sense. I'll do some research on different terminal behaviors. Thanks!

Vim is heavier, but vi is not at all "lite".

I do not know what you are saying. On NetBSD I see this with vi and vim editing the same file

      VSZ   RSS MAXRSS COMMAND
    13240  2896   2896 /usr/bin/vi x.txt
    45412 15212  15212 /usr/pkg/bin/vim x.txt

I'm sorry but you cannot use VS Code and lightweight in the same sentence.

Maybe joe, jed, or uEmacs.

Vim is The Way.

Textadept is lightweight, and more...

notepad++ is great, though they have a dubious habit of dumping political messages on releases.

And they were running on such a shoestring deployment that N++ was hacked by the Chinese last year. I'd stick with VS Code.

Sublime is good too without the political rhetoric. It boggles my mind that windows users refuse the ways of vim.

Was hoping to see Sublime mentioned here. Super stable and available for nearly everything (Windows, Linux, Mac).

I remember a few years back there was an update where it would actually type the political message when you created a new text document. I abandoned it ever since.

The creator is also very selective about the type of politics he supports.

> The creator is also very selective about the type of politics he supports.

Why would someone express political messages without being selective? It’s understandable not wanting overt politics in your software, but this line is odd.

I don't have any use for Notepad++, but reading about this makes me wish I did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad%2B%2B#Political_messag...

The possibility of software being a personal, creative, expressive endeavor (which often includes politics), something I believed in back when I was in university twenty years ago, is a feeling that's receded deeply into the past. That might be as much about me as it is about the world, but I miss it.

I think that different people want different things. It seems to me like these days the idea of software being a personal expression is in vogue more than not, but there are always going to be those who want that and those who don't.

That said, if software is a personal creative expression, one must be prepared for the possibility that some people aren't going to like what one has to say. Often when the politics angle comes up with Notepad++, people will say "it's his software project, he has the right to put in political messages if he wants" as if that somehow compels people to be ok with the political messages. The author certainly has the right to use Notepad++ as a platform for his political opinions, and I would never dream of saying otherwise. I don't want him to go to jail, or get fired by his employer, or anything like that. But I similarly have the right to decide that I don't want to see his political opinions and use another piece of software. You pick up both ends of the stick, as the old saying says.

Where is the place you'd like to see someone say "Declare variables, not war"?

On their blog I guess? Not in my text editor, that's for sure. I'm busy trying to get work done; I neither have time for nor want to hear about the author's opinions on current events.

reading about political messaging in any software should make you AVOID it, not "wishing to have it"

the moment software stops being neutral, it becomes a target

I guess this is true in a professional context - you don't want your user's or company's data somehow becoming compromised because of your choice of text editor.

But, at the same time, that's exactly the sort of thinking that's killed off that feeling I'm sentimental for. As a free human being, I don't want to live in fear of expressing my political views; and as someone who wants to view the software I make as a form of art or expression, I don't want to be afraid to express my political views through my software either. Should a writer avoid being political for fear of becoming a target? For fear of their books or readers becoming a target?

as a free human being, you can do whatever

as a program that tries to be used by others - stay in your lane, you are not an opinion cesspool, you are here to do work and let others do it too

There's another reason to avoid agitating massive numbers of people, beyond fear. It's just not a reasonable thing to do. Like what do you really accomplish? There was that one guy who's mind was somehow changed by a random slogan. Unfortunately, he changed to the other side after seeing their even catchier slogan (it had italics!) a few days later.

You're not changing people's minds and you're simultaneously agitating both many of those who disagree with you as well as plenty who are neutral or even agree with you, as seeing politics shoved somewhere it doesn't belong is something many people do not appreciate, regardless of how those politics may or may not align with their own.

Imagine the result if everybody took to this mindset. Look at everything that's on your desk right now, and what percent of it was made in e.g. China. Imagine if they decided to just start jamming political slogans onto everything. Or for something closer to home, surgeons and anesthesiologists are largely conservative. [1] Imagine if they started signaling their politics. Many people, ironically often those most predisposed to try to make their own political views highly visible, do a poor job of tolerating the views of others. This sort of behavior would just cause complete chaos and disorder and make everybody even more pissed off at each other than they already are.

And political signaling can also make you look bad even to the audience that might ideologically agree with you. For instance notepad++ takes a position on essentially every big controversial US geopolitical issue, but they are conspicuously silent on the Gaza issue. If they hadn't taken on any political positions, this isn't an issue. But when they take a position on every divisive issue, suddenly their not taking a position on one like this effectively is taking a position, but it's one that (for once) they don't want to say.

[1] - https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/870192?form=fpf

A few cosmetic names for patch versions and political banners on websites seems pretty mild. I was a constant user of Notepad++ for more than a decade (until moving my last computer to Linux a few months ago), and never had any idea that they did any of the messaging listed on their Wikipedia.

If anything, I could stand for most things to be just a bit more political than them. Most things are way more political than that.

What non-political things would you say are "way" more political than what they're doing? What I mean by non-political is that you kind of expect this sort of nonsense in the media or whatever, but not a text editor. They also have their schtick in the documentation, and at times have included it as 'easter eggs' in the program itself.

It's already made the software a target for hacking amongst other things. Taking positions that resonate with perhaps half the people in 15% of the world, and piss off a sizable chunk of people in the remaining 85% of the world is not a great idea. And, from my perspective, it's not just about self defense - but why do you even want to do that?

I hold some fringe views relative to many on here at least, and I don't make any secret of it either - but imagine by username was like 'IllegalImmigrantsAreIllegal' or something. It'd be like 'oh cool, I see you're 13.' I see this as something along the same lines. If the topic comes up, it comes up, but making it a part of your identity is childish and antagonistic.

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