Best Notepad2 Alternatives
Notepad2 is described as 'fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. Simple as possible, but yet powerful. Has full Unicode support. Can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry' and is a very popular Text Editor. There are more than 100 alternatives to Notepad2 for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD and Xfce. The best alternative is Notepad++, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Notepad2 are Sublime Text, Atom, Geany and Kate.
Notepad2 alternatives are mainly Text Editors but may also be Code Editors or IDEs. Filter by these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of Notepad2.Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages.
Notepad++ vs Notepad2 opinions
The best plain text editor for Windows
Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features.
- Free Personal • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Chrome OS
- BSD
- Electron / Atom Shell
Atom is an open-source, Electron based text editor with a massive ecosystem of plugins and themes that are easily accessible through a built-in package manager. Being built with Electron, it uses web technology (HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Node.
Discontinued
Atom will be discontinued at the end of 2022: https://github.blog/2022-06-08-sunsetting-atom/
Atom vs Notepad2 opinions
Slow and bloated. Atom isn't a lightweight Notepad2 alternative.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- PortableApps.com
- Xfce
Geany is a small and lightweight Integrated Development Environment. It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages.
The Kate project develops two main products: KatePart, the advanced editor component which is used in numerous KDE applications requiring a text editing component, and Kate, a MDI text editor application.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- Haiku
GNU nano is a small and friendly text editor. Besides basic text editing, nano offers many extra features like an interactive search and replace, go to line and column number, auto-indentation, feature toggles, internationalization support, and filename tab completion.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Chrome OS
- BSD
- GNOME
- OpenSolaris
Official text editor of the GNOME desktop environment. Has syntax highlighting and is suitable for programming, with support for several languages. It is extensible with plugins.
Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdesigners, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages, and it focuses on editing dynamic and interactive websites.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
CudaText is a cross-platform text editor, written in Lazarus.
Notepad3 is a fast and light-weight Scintilla-based text editor with syntax highlighting. It has a small memory footprint, but is powerful enough to handle most programming jobs.
Notepad3 vs Notepad2 opinions
KillyFurther improved fork with some convenient features. Still as lightweight as always.