AkelPad

Many years ago, I was seeking for an alternative to NotePad, without real success during long time. But when I found AkelPad, I stopped to use NotePad. And I was using AkelPad every day, up to the moment when I stopped to use Windows.

I'm not a coder and I like this the most. It's similar to EmEditor but free.

Small, fast and powerfull.

Just the right amount of features, feels really like an improved Notepad. It's very easy to configure it to use the colors you prefer. The fullscreen plugin is excellent for distraction-free writing.

I'm a long-time metapad and Notepad2 user, and I thought AkelPad would make a nice "upgrade" from Notepad2, but after trying it out I returned to Notepad2. Although it has more features than Notepad2, I found the interface more confusing and less intuitive. For example, in Notepad2 I was able to easily change to a dark theme without much fuss, but with AkelPad I fumbled for 15 minutes and was still not able to change to a dark theme, so I gave up (I did see an option for "Solarized Dark" in one of the plugin settings, but selecting it didn't do anything). Also, the settings are broken into two separate dialogues for core settings and plugin settings, and it's hard to remember which dialogue to open to change a particular setting (it doesn't help that a lot of the plugins are part of the core feature set in other code editors). All in all, it's got potential, but in its current state it's too unpolished and quirky for my taste. If Notepad2 is too limited for you, then there is a fork called Notepad2-mod that has some important additions that you may find useful.

Same GUI with Notepad, but much more options, plugins and tab support. Setup has the ability to replace the Windows Notepad without deleting it of course.

Small lightweight and portable, can use add-ons to further usefulness.