1. Home
  2. Text Editors
  3. Notepad++ Reviews
  4. User Review of Notepad++
Notepad++ is one of the first applications I install every time I do a fresh install of Windows.
December 22, 2018

Notepad++ is one of the first applications I install every time I do a fresh install of Windows.

Chris Martin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Notepad++

Working with several different internal groups over the years, it's clear that Notepad++ is widely used by the IT staff (sysadmins, dbas, programmers, tech support, etc). It is not considered a corporate application that we provide to all users across our department, but the majority of the tech-related staff use Notepad++ on a regular basis. It significantly enhances the native windows text editor, by providing a magnitude of additional functions that are helpful in the day-to-day tech world.
  • It's extremely lightweight and does not slow down performance when editing files.
  • It provides syntax highlighting for an endless amount of languages.
  • The 3rd party and community-based plugins allow notepad++ to be enhanced beyond its off-the-shelf state.
  • It can be used to easily navigate and browse through .log files
  • It's FREE and Open Source
  • It has native autocomplete for some programming languages, which can slow down with plugins.
  • Biggest room for improvement is it's dated design UX/UI.
  • Notepad++ is a huge time-saver in a sense that I can easily get in and out of files to make changes in a jiffy. This has been an ongoing benefit since I started using it in my full-time career, as well as in my freelance related work.
  • Since Notepad++ is open source, i've been able to save myself on licensing expensive editors, anywhere in a range of $5 - $500 over the course of 10+ years.
I haven't used a lot of other editors that are similar to Notepad++ aside from Sublime Text. Although I do like the interface of Sublime Text, I did not like how it was dependent on learning and memorizing a lot of hotkeys and commands. I like that Notepad++ has a rich, although dated, interface. It's hard enough keeping up with multiple programming languages, adding more things to memorize to the list adds up.
On a regular basis, I use Notepad++ to quickly edit files without having to open a more powerful IDE. If I need to make changes to source-code, for example, and SQL script, I'll typically do it in Notepad++ depending on the complexity. The same goes for other files, like JavaScript, XML, HTML, etc. I also use it to read log files. For example, while doing system administration for app servers, I've created a custom syntax highlight for the type of log files that I read. This way I can easily identify debugging or error lines throughout the log files.