Notepad++ is fast, lightweight, and free. Here’s how to use its best features.

Essential Features

  • Syntax highlighting — Auto-detected for 80+ languages. Change via Language menu
  • Multi-tab editing — Open dozens of files, drag tabs to reorder
  • Split view — Right-click a tab → Clone to Other View for side-by-side editing
  • Column mode — Alt+drag to select a rectangular block of text
  • Bookmarks — Ctrl+F2 to toggle, F2/Shift+F2 to jump between them

Search and Replace

Ctrl+F opens the find dialog. The real power is in the Replace tab (Ctrl+H):

  • Regular expressions — Check “Regular expression” mode
  • Search in files — Find across entire folders
  • Mark tab — Highlight all occurrences in the document

Regex examples:

  • \b\w+@\w+\.\w+\b — Find email addresses
  • ^\s*$ — Find empty lines
  • (.+)\n(.+) — Swap two consecutive lines

Macros

Macro → Start Recording. Perform your actions. Macro → Stop Recording. Macro → Save Current Recorded Macro and assign a hotkey. Replay with Macro → Playback or your assigned shortcut.

Example: record a macro to wrap selected text in <strong> tags. Save it as Ctrl+Shift+B.

Plugins

Plugins → Plugins Admin. Essential plugins:

  • Compare — Diff two files side by side
  • Explorer — File browser sidebar
  • NppFTP — Edit files directly on remote servers
  • XML Tools — Pretty print, validate, and transform XML

Settings

Settings → Preferences → New Document: set default encoding to UTF-8. Enable “Remember current session” to restore all open files on relaunch.