Visual Studio Code is used primarily as a source code editor. You can also grab a portable version from the download page one is in the ZIP format and the other is a 7Z file.Ĭentered primarily around editing and debugging code, so it could be too much for the average user Windows is the only supported OS, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

It saves text documents to a huge variety of formats like TXT, CSS, ASM, AU3, BASH, BAT, HPP, CC, DIFF, HTML, REG, HEX, JAVA, SQL, and VBS. Notepad++ accepts plugins to do things like auto-save open documents, merge all the text from open documents into one main file, align programming code, monitor open documents to refresh them as they change, copy and paste more than one item from the clipboard at once, and lots more. The Find option searches for words with criteria like backward direction, match whole word only, match case, and wrap around.Īlso supported: bookmarking, macros, auto-backup, multi-page searching, resumed sessions, read-only mode, encoding conversions, searching for words on Wikipedia, and opening the document in your web browser. It also includes a really handy text search-and-replace function, automatic syntax highlighting, word auto-completion, offline text-file conversion. This program can open nearly any file as a text document and supports lots of helpful plugins. Probably the easiest way to edit files with this tool is to right-click the file and choose Edit with Notepad++ from the context menu. While each tab represents its own file, the program can interact with all of them at once to do things like compare files for differences and search for or replace text. This program uses tabbed browsing, which means several documents remain open at a time and they'll display at the top as tabs.

It’s really easy to use for beginners who just need a text file opener or editor but also includes some really advanced features. Notepad++ is an excellent alternative notepad application for Windows computers.

Best text editor for writers