A modified version (fork) of Notepad2 based on Kai Liu's and other people's patches.
This fork is maintained by itlezy at itlezy/notepad2-mod, with a focus on small, practical improvements to the original editor.
The product direction is to stay close to Notepad2-mod: fast startup, responsive editing, a small footprint, and simple native Windows behavior. Changes should be minimal, focused patches with a clear benefit. This fork will not move to Notepad3/Notepad4 or adopt their feature stacks; matching newer editors or dependency versions is not a goal.
The interface remains single-document. Multi-tab editing and Notepad++ parity are out of scope; isolated fixes from other editors may be evaluated surgically.
The upstream repository, XhmikosR/notepad2-mod, is archived and was last updated in July 2018. Ongoing maintenance for this fork happens here; upstream history, licensing, and contributor credits are preserved.
This fork builds with Visual Studio 2022 and includes native Original/Dark editor palettes. Choose View > Editor Theme > Original / Dark. Original preserves existing custom colors; Dark supplies syntax and editor colors across all 38 schemes. Theme work covers the editor only; application chrome is out of scope. See the roadmap and contributor guide.
The bundled editor engine is Scintilla 3.7.6 (LongTerm3), with the original Notepad2-mod customizations preserved. See its vendor notes for the source and local changes.
Customize the active palette using View > Customize Schemes. Colors are kept separately for Original and Dark; fonts and other non-color preferences remain shared. Preview, Cancel, and Reset work with the active palette. The existing second-default scheme toggle remains independent. Theme selection follows the existing Save Settings preference; explicit Save Settings also saves it.
There are no external theme files or automatic system-theme synchronization. Scintilla's native autocomplete list and the existing bookmark pixmap retain their original appearance. Scheme import/export remains an explicit full-scheme operation, including file associations; it is not used to switch themes.
- Code folding
- Support for bookmarks
- Option to mark all occurrences of a word
- Word auto-completion
- Syntax highlighting support for AutoHotkey, AutoIt3, AviSynth, Bash, CMake, CoffeeScript, Inno Setup, LaTeX, Lua, Markdown, NSIS, Ruby, Tcl, YAML and VHDL scripts
- Improved support for NFO ANSI art
- Support for replacing Windows Notepad using a clean, unintrusive registry-based method
- Other various minor changes and tweaks
- XP (SP3, SP2 might or might not work), Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 both 32-bit and 64-bit
This is the historical upstream support list. Current fork builds target Windows 10/11 using the modern MSVC toolset; XP compatibility is no longer a build goal. Compatibility with other Windows versions has not been verified.
- Report bugs and propose focused improvements in this fork.
- Read the contributor guide before submitting changes.
With no selection, Ctrl+C / Ctrl+Insert copy the current line and Ctrl+X / Shift+Delete cut it. These line operations include a line-ending and use Scintilla's existing line-clipboard marker: Ctrl+V / Shift+Insert insert the line above the caret's current line. With a selection, normal copy/cut/paste behavior is retained. Cutting is undoable and respects read-only documents.
- Ctrl+Alt+F2 Expand selection to next match.
- Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F2 Expand selection to previous match.
- Ctrl+Shift+Enter New line with toggled auto indent option.
Install Visual Studio 2022 (or its Build Tools) with Desktop development with C++, MSVC v143 x86/x64 tools, C++ ATL/MFC, and a Windows 10/11 SDK. Install Git for Windows as well; revision generation uses its Bash and Git executables.
From the repository root in PowerShell:
.\build\build.ps1The default builds Release for both x86 and x64. To build and run only x64:
.\build\build.ps1 -Architecture x64
.\bin\VS2022\Release_x64\Notepad2.exeUse -Configuration Debug for Debug builds and -Target Rebuild or -Target Clean
as needed. Outputs are in bin/VS2022/Release_x86, Release_x64, Debug_x86,
and Debug_x64. No Developer PowerShell session is required: the script finds
MSBuild using vswhere. Alternatively, open build/Notepad2.sln in VS 2022 and
select Release/Debug and Win32/x64. The projects select the latest installed
Windows 10/11 SDK via WindowsTargetPlatformVersion=10.0.
Release and Debug builds for x86 and x64 have been verified locally with Visual Studio 2022 17.14, MSVC 14.44, and Windows SDK 10.0.26100.0. Legacy packaging and signing scripts are separate from this build command and have not been validated. GitHub Actions builds and tests Release/Debug x86/x64 on Windows Server 2022. Successful runs retain executable artifacts and portable Release ZIPs for 14 days; failure logs are uploaded as well. Download published portable builds from Releases. Initial testing builds are marked as prereleases. Binaries are unsigned.
Portable archives contain the executable, a default INI, usage documentation, licenses, and source/version metadata. Extract into a writable directory. When upgrading an existing installation, preserve its INI and redirected user settings. Release setup does not change system-wide Notepad replacement or file associations.
Merge validated changes into master with granular history preserved, wait for
master CI to pass, and build that exact clean commit to obtain its file version:
.\build\build.ps1
$releaseVersion = (Get-Item .\bin\VS2022\Release_x64\Notepad2.exe).VersionInfo.FileVersion.Trim()
git tag "v$releaseVersion-rc.1"
git push origin "v$releaseVersion-rc.1"Stable tags omit -rc.N. Tags use the existing four-part file version; full Git
history determines its final revision component. The workflow checks both binary
versions against the tag, tests all four configurations, then publishes x86/x64
ZIPs and SHA256SUMS.txt. A prerelease does not replace the latest stable release.
Only the publishing job has repository write permission, using GITHUB_TOKEN. There are no signing secrets or installer dependencies. Published release assets must not be overwritten: use a new tag/commit for corrections. If publishing fails after creating a draft, inspect its logs and rerun the failed job on the same tag; draft assets are replaceable until publication. Never move an existing release tag.
The packaging command is ./build/package.ps1 -Architecture x64 (or x86). It
uses Release output and writes into ignored bin/packages; supply a fresh
-OutputDirectory when repackaging an already-created version locally.
Tests use Python 3.13, pytest, and pywinauto's Win32 backend. Test dependencies are locked with hashes and are not application dependencies. PowerShell is used for building, not UI automation. To test a built executable:
py -3.13 -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install --require-hashes -r tests/requirements.txt
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pytest
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pytest --executable .\bin\VS2022\Release_x86\Notepad2.exe --architecture x86The checks launch isolated instances with temporary settings, exercise all 38
schemes and customization Preview/Cancel/Reset, and verify palette/font separation,
switching, restart persistence, invalid defaults, and disabled settings saving.
They also exercise save prompts with embedded NUL/whitespace, exact-byte Cancel
preservation, production MRU functions, source charset, and startup show-state
contracts. The latter do not replace an interactive standard-user UAC test.
Use --configuration Debug for the corresponding native helper runtime. A
pre-fix binary can be checked with -m pytest tests/test_save_prompts.py --legacy-save-behavior --executable <path> to reproduce the nine loss paths.
These tests do not replace visual review or establish large-file performance.
Run the manual Python benchmark separately from normal tests. It uses pywinauto and psutil as test-only tools; no instrumentation runs inside the editor.
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install --require-hashes -r tests/benchmark-requirements.txt
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe tests/benchmark_editor.py --baseline <previous-release-exe> --candidate <candidate-exe> --output bin/performance/session/results.jsonUse published x64 executables on the same machine and avoid other benchmarks or desktop interaction while it runs. It displays generated plain-text documents in a fixed viewport, with isolated settings and no clipboard access. Large-file confirmation is disabled only in those temporary settings. Existing installations, user documents, preferences and associations are untouched.
The default seven runs follow a discarded warmup for each mode/workload and rotate the order of baseline Original, candidate Original, and candidate Dark. Workloads are 128 KiB text, 25 MiB text, and a 1 MiB single line. Results include raw samples, medians, spread, executable/workload hashes and machine details. Metrics cover loading, initial repaint, literal search, 100 edit/undo pairs, 40 scroll/repaint moves, process memory and a one-second idle CPU sample. The single-line workload can take several minutes. Use a fresh output directory; generated fixtures remain beside the report as build artifacts.
This measures warm-cache command/paint timings including automation overhead. It does not establish cold-start, syntax-heavy or physical typing latency. Occlusion, display scaling, scanner activity and machine load affect results; there is deliberately no automatic performance pass/fail threshold.