A fast, lightweight, Scintilla-based text editor for Windows
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Notepad3 is a free, open-source text editor with syntax highlighting for Windows. Built on the Scintilla editing component and Lexilla lexer library, it has a small memory footprint while being powerful enough for professional programming and everyday text editing.
Notepad3 is based on code from Florian Balmer's Notepad2 and XhmikosR's Notepad2-mod. MiniPath is based on Florian Balmer's metapath.
- Code folding with toggle-all support
- Bookmarks for quick navigation within files
- Word auto-completion with configurable fill-up characters
- Mark all occurrences of a selected word with occurrence count display
- Find and Replace with Oniguruma regular expression engine
- Undo/Redo that preserves selection state
- Visual Studio–style copy/paste of the current line (when nothing is selected)
- Virtual space rectangular selection (Alt+Drag)
- Accelerated word navigation with configurable delimiters
- Insert GUIDs directly into your document
Over 55 languages supported, including:
ANSI Art, Apache Config, Assembly, AutoHotkey, AutoIt3, AviSynth, Awk, Batch, C/C++, C#, CMake, CoffeeScript, CSS, CSV, D, Dart, Diff, F77/Fortran, Go, HTML/XML, Java, JavaScript, JSON, Julia, Kotlin, KiXtart, LaTeX, Lua, Makefiles, Markdown, MATLAB, Nim, NSIS, Pascal, Perl, PHP, PowerShell, Python, R/S-Plus, Registry, Resource Script, Ruby, Rust, Shell Script, SQL, SystemVerilog, Tcl, TOML, VBScript, VHDL, Verilog, Visual Basic, YAML, and more.
- AES-256 Rijndael encryption/decryption (in-app and command-line batch tool)
- Encoding detection powered by uchardet
- File change monitoring with configurable check intervals
- Emacs file variables support (encoding, mode, tab-width, etc.)
- File history that preserves caret position and encoding
- Portable design — runs from USB drives with relative path storage
- grepWinNP3 — integrated search-in-files tool with regex support (Ctrl+Shift+F)
- Hyperlink hotspot highlighting — Ctrl+Click to open in browser, Alt+Click to load in editor
- High-DPI aware with high-definition toolbar icons
- Dark mode support with customizable colors
- Customizable status bar with 16 configurable fields (line, column, encoding, TinyExpr evaluation, Unicode code point, and more)
- Customizable toolbar labels — display function names next to icons
- Zoom from 10% to 1000% (Ctrl+Scroll or toolbar buttons)
- Transparent window mode with configurable opacity
27 language translations:
Afrikaans, Belarusian, Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Dutch, English (US & UK), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil & Portugal), Russian, Slovak, Spanish (Spain & Latin America), Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese
- MiniPath — fast file browser plugin (Ctrl+M)
- grepWinNP3 — powerful search-and-replace across files
- OS: Windows 8.1, 10, or 11
- Architectures: x86 (Win32), x64, x64 with AVX2, ARM64
| Channel | Link |
|---|---|
| Stable Release | rizonesoft.com/downloads/notepad3 |
| GitHub Releases | github.com/rizonesoft/Notepad3/releases |
| Nightly Builds | Pre-releases on GitHub |
Notepad3 is fully portable — no installation required. Extract the archive and run Notepad3.exe. Settings are stored in Notepad3.ini alongside the executable. See Replacing Windows Notepad for system-wide integration.
Notepad3 is built with Visual Studio 2022 (toolset v143) targeting the Windows SDK.
# Restore NuGet packages (required once)
nuget restore Notepad3.sln
# Build a specific platform
Build\Build_x64.cmd Release
# Build all platforms (Win32, x64, x64_AVX2, ARM64)
Build\BuildAll.cmd Release
# Or use MSBuild directly
msbuild Notepad3.sln /m /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64Run Version.ps1 before building to generate version headers from templates in Versions\.
Notepad3 uses a portable INI file for all settings. Press Ctrl+F7 to open it directly in the editor.
- UI settings (
[Settings]) — managed through Menu → Settings - Advanced settings (
[Settings2]) — edit manually; most require a restart - Status bar (
[Statusbar Settings]) — customize field layout, order, and width - Toolbar labels (
[Toolbar Labels]) — show function names next to icons
📖 Full configuration reference: doc/Configuration.md
Contributions are welcome! Here's how to help:
- Report bugs — Open an issue with steps to reproduce
- Submit pull requests — Fork the repo, create a feature branch, and submit a PR against
master - Translate — Add or improve translations in the
language\directory - Spread the word — Star the repo and share with others
For support, visit rizonesoft.com/contact-us.
Notepad3 builds upon the work of:
| Project | Author | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Notepad2 | Florian Balmer | Original editor |
| Notepad2-mod | XhmikosR | Extended fork |
| Scintilla 5.5.8 | Neil Hodgson | Editing component |
| Lexilla 5.4.6 | Neil Hodgson | Syntax highlighting |
| Oniguruma | K. Kosako | Regex engine |
| uchardet | Mozilla / freedesktop | Encoding detection |
| Fugue Icons | Yusuke Kamiyamane | Toolbar icons |
- Notepad3 is an advanced text editor that supports many programming languages — gHacks
- Notepad3 review on Nsane Forums — Nsane Forums
Notepad3 is licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License.
Copyright © 2008–2026 Rizonesoft. All rights reserved.
