Note++ ✦

A developer-focused desktop text editor

Notepad++ reimagined for the modern web stack — powered by Monaco, Electron, an integrated terminal, local AI, a real source-control panel, language-server IntelliSense, draw.io structured diagrams, and a hand-drawn whiteboard.

📥 Download • Quick Start • Features • Architecture • Roadmap • 🐞 Report a bug • ✨ Request a feature

⚠️ Important — Existing Windows users on 1.7.4 or earlier

Auto-update is broken for the 1.7.4 → 1.7.5/1.7.6 hop. The toolbar pill freezes at Downloading 100% and the install never starts (electron-updater rejects our self-signed certificate's untrusted root). The fix is already shipping in 1.7.6 onwards — but the broken code is the one running on your machine, so the very next update has to be done by hand, this one time only.

What to do:

Download the latest installer: notepp-win-x64.exe

Right-click the downloaded .exe → Run as administrator (required so it can replace the existing install)

Let it overwrite your current installation

From 1.7.6 onward, in-app auto-update works normally again — this is a one-time manual step.

📖 About

Note++ is what happens when you take the spirit of Notepad++ and rebuild it on a modern foundation. It's not trying to be another VS Code, and it's not trying to be a generic notepad — it sits comfortably in between: fast to launch, low-friction to use, with the editing power developers actually need day to day, plus a handful of opinionated extras you won't find anywhere else.

Under the hood it runs the same Monaco engine that powers VS Code, in a lightweight Electron shell, with an integrated xterm terminal (true PTY via node-pty), live preview for HTML and Markdown, Mermaid diagrams, an Excalidraw-powered hand-drawn whiteboard, draw.io structured diagrams (downloaded on demand, persists across upgrades), Language Server Protocol integration (Pyright for Python, click-to-install), a full Git source-control panel with inline diff gutter, a local AI assistant (Ollama with Agent mode + multi-turn chat + quick-action chips), per-file AES-256-GCM encryption, Compare (file & folder diff like Diff.Net / WinMerge), Recent Files, an external-change file watcher, silent auto-update with a polished progress window, and cloud session sync. Ships for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Built for developers who want a snappy editor that does more than just edit text — not a full IDE, not a plain text box.

📑 Table of Contents

Features
Quick Start
Tech Stack
Project Structure
Architecture
Git Integration
AI Assistant
Language Server Protocol (LSP)
draw.io Diagrams
Encrypted Pad
Whiteboard
Compare (File & Folder Diff)
Find / Replace / Mark / Find in Files
Live Preview & Mermaid
Auto-Update
Keyboard Shortcuts
Roadmap
Contributing
License

✨ Features

Editing

Multi-tab editor powered by Monaco — the engine behind VS Code
50+ language syntax highlighters out of the box
IntelliSense auto-complete for JavaScript, TypeScript, and friends
Language Server Protocol — real diagnostics + hover + completion + go-to-definition for Python (Pyright); click-to-install pill in the status bar when the server isn't present
Find / Replace / Mark / Find in Files — Notepad++-style search results panel, multi-colour persistent highlights, gutter+minimap markers update live as you type
Inline git diff gutter — green/blue/red bars on every changed line vs HEAD, updates as you edit
Persistent UI toggles — Word Wrap, Dark Mode, Zoom, Minimap, etc. survive a restart (saved to settings.json)
Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and Quick Open (Ctrl+P)
Bookmarks, breadcrumbs, minimap, word wrap toggles
Recent Files menu (last 15, deduped, stale entries auto-pruned)
External-change watcher — clean tabs auto-reload; dirty tabs ask first
Snappy by default — no ligatures (!= stays !=), no caret animations, no smooth scrolling, no inline color decorators

Compare

Compare two files — side-by-side Monaco diff editor (or inline), syntax-highlighted, next/prev change navigation
Compare two folders — side-by-side tree with added · removed · differ · equal colour coding (Diff.Net / WinMerge style)
Click a differing file row in the folder-diff → opens that file's diff in a new tab
Right-click a tab → Select for Compare, then on another tab → Compare with selected
Skips node_modules / .git / dist / build / out / .next / .cache / .vscode / .idea / __pycache__
See DIFF.md for the design

Source control

Auto-detected Git repos — opens any file and Note++ walks up for .git
Source Control side panel (Ctrl+Shift+G) — VS Code-style staging, commit, branches
Status-bar pill showing branch · ahead/behind · dirty count
File-tree decorations — color-coded M / A / D / R / U / ? badges on every changed file
Push, pull, sync, fetch with one click; respects your pull.rebase config
Branch switch + create from a dropdown menu
Auto-refresh on window focus + after save + after every git op; background git fetch every 3 min

AI Assistant (local, private, free)

One-click setup — clicking 🤖 detects Ollama, auto-starts the daemon, auto-downloads qwen2.5-coder:1.5b if no models installed
Multi-turn chat — full conversation history; ask follow-ups, refine answers
Agent mode ⚡ — AI's reply replaces editor content via a Monaco diff editor preview: review, then Apply or Reject
Quick-action chips — ✨ Polish · 🔧 Refactor · 📝 Comments · 🧪 Tests · 💡 Explain · 📓 Memory
AGENTS.md support — vendor-neutral standard adopted by Cursor / Codex / Copilot / Cline / Codex / Jules / Gemini / Windsurf / Zed — auto-injected into the AI system prompt for any repo containing one
.notepp/memory.md — Note++-specific per-project instructions, auto-loaded every turn
Multi-model picker — pick separate models for Chat vs Agent (e.g. fast qwen2.5-coder:1.5b for chat, beefier deepseek-coder:6.7b for agent)
Selection-aware — highlight a function → Agent → "convert to TypeScript"
Streaming responses with token-by-token preview
Action bar in chat mode: Insert at cursor / Replace selection / Append / Replace entire file
Six recommended models from Ollama in the picker — Phi, Llama, Qwen, DeepSeek, Gemma

Encrypted pad

Per-file encryption with a single profile-wide password
AES-256-GCM + PBKDF2-SHA-256 (600 000 iterations) + gzip pre-compression
Recovery key — Crockford base32, displayed once at setup, downloadable as JSON
Auto-detect on open — encrypted files prompt for unlock, decrypt in memory, look like normal files
Toolbar 🔒 to encrypt the active tab; 🔒 badge on the tab name; 🔒 status-bar indicator
Standard JSON envelope on disk — versioned, inspectable, future-proof
See ENCRYPTION.md for the full threat model and design

Whiteboard (hand-drawn)

Excalidraw 0.18 in an iframe — same engine as excalidraw.com
Rectangles, ellipses, diamonds, arrows, lines, freedraw, text, images, libraries, frames, laser pointer
Save lifecycle matches text tabs — red dot on first edit, Ctrl+S prompts Save As for new tabs; session auto-save guards unsaved work against crashes
.excalidraw file format native support; opens raw Excalidraw exports too
v1 → v2 migration on load — old auto-backed whiteboards still open and migrate cleanly on first save

Diagrams (structured — draw.io)

Full draw.io editor in an iframe — pinned to v30.0.2, runs entirely offline (stealth=1)
Downloaded on demand the first time you open a .drawio file or click Tools → Diagram (draw.io) → New Diagram (~40 MB, one-time)
Bundle persists across upgrades — lives in userData, electron-updater leaves it untouched
Starter templates in Tools → Diagram (draw.io) → From Template: Flowchart · Sequence Diagram · Class Diagram (UML) · Entity Relationship
Manual update check — Tools → Diagram (draw.io) → Check for updates compares the installed version to whatever Note++ has pinned

Productivity

Integrated terminal (xterm + true PTY via node-pty) — proper resize, ANSI colours, full PowerShell/bash
File tree sidebar for fast navigation
Live preview for HTML and Markdown (Ctrl+Shift+V) — with zoom controls (Ctrl+Wheel) and a ⛶ maximise button that hides the editor pane
Mermaid Live Editor for .mmd / .mermaid files — auto-opens split pane, templates, SVG/PNG export, zoom
Run file with a single keystroke (F5)
Cloud session sync — Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox
Auto-save session — pick up exactly where you left off; encrypted tabs re-prompt unlock
Auto-backup to a configurable location with version retention
File-association double-click — open any .txt / .md / .json / .html / .excalidraw / .drawio / … file with Note++ from Windows Explorer / macOS Finder / Linux file managers (deferred-flush IPC so the file always loads even if the renderer is still booting)
Auto-update — silent background download via electron-updater; the toolbar pill on the right edge surfaces New update available → Downloading X% → Click to update. Clicking opens a dedicated progress window with a success animation, then relaunches. Settings → Check for Updates Automatically to disable.

Developer tools

Code formatting — JSON, XML, language-aware
Base64 encode / decode
Regex tester with live matching
Sort lines, remove duplicates, remove empty lines, case conversion

Polish

Dark / light mode toggle with first-class theming for every panel and modal
Zoom controls, configurable preferences, status bar with line/col/length/encoding/EOL/language
About dialog with a clickable credit and live version info

🚀 Quick Start

Install (prebuilt installer)

Grab the latest installer for your OS from Releases:

Pick the right file for your OS — every link below resolves permanently to the latest release (no per-version URL maintenance):

OS	Two options
Windows (x64)	📦 Installer (.exe) · 📁 Portable (.zip)
macOS	🍎 Intel (.dmg) · 🍎 Apple Silicon (.dmg)
Linux (x64)	🐧 Portable (.AppImage) · 🐧 Debian/Ubuntu (.deb)

Filenames are version-less by design — the actual version is shown in the installer UI, the About dialog, and on the Releases page title. You'll also see a handful of *-mac.zip / *.blockmap / latest*.yml files in each release — those are auto-updater payloads, not for manual download.

Note++ registers itself as a handler for .txt, .md, .json, .html, .excalidraw, .drawio and friends — right-click any file → Open with Note++.

macOS first launch: builds are currently unsigned. Right-click → Open the first time to bypass Gatekeeper. Linux AppImage: on Ubuntu 24.04+ you may need sudo apt install libfuse2t64.

Run from source

# Prerequisites: Node.js 18+, Git, one of Windows / macOS / Linux

git clone https://github.com/YogeshPraj/Note-.git
cd Note-
npm install        # auto-runs `npm run build:wb` via postinstall
npm start          # or double-click launch.bat (Windows)

Build the installer yourself

npm run build          # auto-detects current OS

# Or target a specific platform explicitly
npm run build:win      # Windows  → NSIS .exe
npm run build:msi      # Windows  → MSI installer
npm run build:mac      # macOS    → .dmg + .zip (x64 + arm64)
npm run build:linux    # Linux    → AppImage + .deb (x64)

Cross-platform builds must run on the target OS (native modules like node-pty compile per-OS). The 3-OS GitHub Actions matrix handles this for releases — tag push → parallel builds on windows-latest / macos-latest / ubuntu-latest.

🧱 Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Runtime	Electron 32 (Node 20.18, Chromium 128)
Editor	Monaco Editor 0.45
Markdown	marked v18
Diagrams (hand)	Excalidraw 0.18 + React 18 (bundled via esbuild into iframe)
Diagrams (struct.)	draw.io v30 (downloaded on demand, served via `drawio://` protocol)
Diagrams (mermaid)	Mermaid v11
Inline git diff	`diff` (jsdiff)
LSP	Pyright (Python) via stdio JSON-RPC; custom client wired to Monaco
Terminal	xterm 5.3 + xterm-addon-fit + node-pty 1.1 (true PTY)
AI	Ollama (local LLM via HTTP at `127.0.0.1:11434`)
Auto-update	`electron-updater` + GitHub provider
File diff	Monaco's built-in `createDiffEditor`
Folder diff	`dir-compare` (content-hash comparison, MIT)
Crypto	Web Crypto API — AES-256-GCM, PBKDF2-SHA-256, HKDF
Compression	Native `CompressionStream` / `DecompressionStream`
Bundler	esbuild 0.24 (only for the Excalidraw iframe app)
Security	`contextIsolation: true`, `nodeIntegration: false`
Node bridge	`src/preload.js` → `window.electronAPI`
Platforms	Windows · macOS (x64 + arm64) · Linux (AppImage + .deb)

📁 Project Structure

Note++/
├── package.json              ← "main": "src/main.js"
├── launch.bat                ← double-click to run
├── build-whiteboard.js       ← esbuild script: bundles Excalidraw + copies fonts
├── CLAUDE.md                 ← Claude session context
├── features/                 ← per-feature design specs
│   ├── AGENT.md              ← AI agent-mode spec
│   ├── DIFF.md               ← Compare (file + folder diff) spec
│   ├── ENCRYPTION.md         ← encrypted-pad feature spec
│   ├── GIT.md                ← git integration spec
│   ├── LSP.md                ← language-server-protocol integration spec
│   └── ROADMAP.md            ← three-tier feature roadmap (Tier 1 / 2 / 3)
├── tools/                    ← scratch / legacy artefacts not in the shipped app
└── src/
    ├── main.js               ← Electron main process (IPC, file dialogs, menus)
    ├── preload.js            ← IPC bridge (window.electronAPI)
    ├── index.html            ← Renderer entry point
    ├── renderer.js           ← All UI logic (~6500 lines)
    ├── style.css             ← All styles
    ├── monaco-worker.js      ← Monaco web worker helper
    ├── crypto.js             ← AES-GCM / PBKDF2 / HKDF / gzip (encrypted pad)
    ├── git-service.js        ← Git CLI wrapper (main process)
    ├── lsp-service.js        ← Main-process LSP subprocess manager + JSON-RPC framing
    ├── lsp-client.js         ← Renderer-side bridge: Monaco providers ↔ LSP requests
    ├── drawio-service.js     ← On-demand download + extract for draw.io bundle
    ├── drawio.html           ← draw.io iframe shell (postMessage broker)
    ├── whiteboard.html       ← Excalidraw iframe shell
    ├── whiteboard-app.jsx    ← React + Excalidraw entry (source)
    ├── whiteboard.bundle.*   ← generated by esbuild (gitignored)
    ├── excalidraw-fonts/     ← generated, self-hosted fonts (gitignored)
    ├── mermaid-live-view.html← Mermaid Live Editor overlay
    ├── updater.html          ← Auto-update progress + success window
    ├── updater-preload.js    ← Strict preload for the updater window
    ├── assets/               ← SVG toolbar icons
    └── games/                ← in-app HTML games (Dev Arcade)

🏛️ Architecture

IPC Pattern

Note++ follows Electron's recommended security model — contextIsolation is on, nodeIntegration is off. All filesystem, Node, and git/ollama access flows through preload.js, which exposes a narrow API on window.electronAPI.

Renderer (renderer.js)
    │
    │  window.electronAPI.readFile(path)
    │  window.electronAPI.git.status(repoRoot)
    │  window.electronAPI.aiChat({ model, messages })
    ▼
Preload (preload.js)  ← context bridge
    │
    │  ipcRenderer.invoke('read-file', path)
    ▼
Main process (main.js + git-service.js)  ← Node.js, fs, dialog, child_process

The renderer never calls require() directly — that's the whole point of the bridge.

Critical loading order

Monaco's vs/loader.js installs a global define(). Every UMD script that exposes its API via window.X must load before vs/loader.js, otherwise they register as anonymous AMD modules and never set their global (we hit this twice — first with marked, then again with xterm in v1.4.1):

<!-- index.html — order matters -->
<script src="../node_modules/marked/lib/marked.umd.js"></script>     <!-- 1 -->
<script src="../node_modules/xterm/lib/xterm.js"></script>           <!-- 2 -->
<script src="../node_modules/xterm-addon-fit/lib/xterm-addon-fit.js"></script>  <!-- 3 -->
<script src="../node_modules/mermaid/dist/mermaid.min.js"></script>  <!-- 4 -->
<script src="../node_modules/diff/dist/diff.min.js"></script>        <!-- 5 -->
<script src="../node_modules/monaco-editor/min/vs/loader.js"></script><!-- 6. AFTER all UMD -->
<script src="crypto.js"></script>                                    <!-- 7 -->
<script src="lsp-client.js"></script>                                <!-- 8 -->
<script src="renderer.js"></script>                                  <!-- 9 -->

Whiteboard bundle

Excalidraw is bundled separately by build-whiteboard.js (esbuild) into src/whiteboard.bundle.{js,css} and loaded inside the whiteboard.html iframe. React lives only inside that iframe; the main renderer stays vanilla JS. Fonts are self-hosted under src/excalidraw-fonts/ — no CDN call. See CLAUDE.md for the full whiteboard architecture and v1→v2 format migration.

draw.io bundle (downloaded on demand)

draw.io is not bundled with the installer. The first time you open a .drawio file or click New Diagram, src/drawio-service.js (main process) downloads draw.war from GitHub releases, extracts it via extract-zip, and writes a version.json marker into userData/drawio-bundle/. The iframe loads drawio://app/index.html?embed=1&proto=json&… via a custom privileged protocol (registerSchemesAsPrivileged + registerFileProtocol with a path-traversal guard). src/drawio.html brokers the embed-mode postMessage protocol between the inner drawio iframe and the parent renderer (dw-load / dw-state / dw-ready / dw-theme), mirroring the whiteboard shell pattern.

Language Server Protocol

src/lsp-service.js (main) spawns one subprocess per language with stdio JSON-RPC framing (Content-Length: <n>\r\n\r\n<body>). src/lsp-client.js (renderer) registers Monaco completion / hover / definition providers that translate to textDocument/* LSP requests, and feeds diagnostics through setModelMarkers. Adding a new language is one entry in the LSP_LANGUAGES registry plus a Monaco language id mapping.

🔀 Git Integration

Note++ ships with a full Source Control workflow — see GIT.md for the spec.


Open the panel	`Ctrl+Shift+G` or click `⎇` in the toolbar
Backend	Shells out to the system `git` CLI (`child_process.spawn`)
Detection	Walks up from the active file's folder looking for `.git`
Status format	`git status --porcelain=v1 -b -z` (NUL-separated; handles paths with spaces)
Refresh	On focus + after save + after any git op; background `git fetch` every 3 min
Auth	Inherits system credential manager (Windows Credential Manager / Keychain / `git-credential`)
Out of scope (v1)	Inline diff gutter, blame annotations, merge conflict UI, multi-repo aggregation

Panel features:

Commit message + ✓ Commit + ↺ Amend (Ctrl+Enter shortcut inside the textarea)
Staged and Changes lists with per-file Stage / Unstage / Discard buttons
Stage All / Unstage All / Discard All (Discard All confirms first)
Push / Pull / Sync / Fetch buttons; Sync = pull then push
Branch picker — switch existing or create new
File-tree badges color-coded per status

🤖 AI Assistant

Local, private, free. Powered by Ollama on 127.0.0.1:11434.

One-click setup

Click 🤖 in the toolbar and Note++:

Detects whether Ollama is installed (PATH + standard install locations)
Starts the Ollama daemon if it's installed but not running (ollama serve detached)
Downloads qwen2.5-coder:1.5b (~1 GB) if you have no models yet — with a live progress bar
Picks the first installed model and connects

If Ollama isn't installed at all, the panel shows an Open download page button linking to ollama.com/download.

Chat mode vs Agent mode

Toggle in the panel header — 🤖 Chat ↔ ⚡ Agent:

Chat (default): conversation thread, follow-ups, action bar lets you Insert / Replace / Append the latest reply
Agent: AI's reply replaces the editor content via a Monaco diff editor preview. You see exactly what's changing, then Apply or Reject. Multi-turn — each follow-up rebuilds the system prompt from your current editor content so iterations work naturally

See AGENT.md for the full spec.

🐍 Language Server Protocol (LSP)

Real diagnostics, hover docs, completion, and go-to-definition — driven by the actual language server (not Monaco's built-in shallow analyser). Currently ships with Pyright for Python; the registry pattern in lsp-service.js makes adding new languages a one-entry change.


Transport	JSON-RPC over stdio (standard LSP framing)
Spawned by	Main process (`src/lsp-service.js`) — one subprocess per language, auto-restart on crash (≤ 3 in 30 s)
Renderer bridge	`src/lsp-client.js` — translates Monaco completion / hover / definition / `setModelMarkers` to LSP requests
Languages	Python (Pyright) — out of the box; tries `pyright-langserver` then `npx -y pyright-langserver --stdio`
Click-to-install	Status-bar pill goes `⬇ Install pyright` (orange, clickable) → runs `npm install -g pyright` → retries automatically
Status pill	`🧠 LSP: pyright starting…` → `🧠 LSP: pyright` (green) → `⚠ missing` (clickable to install) → `✗ crashed`
Lifecycle	Auto-starts the moment a `.py` file becomes active; idle servers stop after 30 s; all servers shut down on app quit
Spec	`LSP.md`

📊 draw.io Diagrams

Note++ ships the full draw.io structured-diagram editor, downloaded on first use and persisted across upgrades. Lives alongside the Excalidraw whiteboard, doesn't replace it — Excalidraw for hand-drawn sketching, draw.io for flowcharts, UML, ERDs, network topology, BPMN, AWS/Azure architecture (huge stencil library).


Editor version	draw.io v30.0.2 (pinned; bump via `DRAWIO_VERSION` in `src/drawio-service.js`)
Bundle size	~40 MB download, ~50 MB unpacked
Bundle location	`%AppData%\notepp\drawio-bundle\` (Windows) / `~/Library/Application Support/notepp/` (macOS) / `~/.config/notepp/` (Linux) — preserved across electron-updater upgrades
Protocol	Custom `drawio://app/...` privileged scheme — no `file://` quirks, no internet calls (`stealth=1`)
Tab type	`'drawio'` with an amber `dw` pill badge
File extensions	`.drawio`, `.xml` (auto-detected by content sniffing for `<mxfile>` / `<mxGraphModel>`)
Menu	`Tools → Diagram (draw.io)` → New Diagram · From Template ▶ · Check for updates

First-use flow

Click Tools → Diagram (draw.io) → New Diagram (or open a .drawio file)
A small modal appears: "Download draw.io (≈40 MB)" with a progress bar
~30 seconds later (depending on connection), tab opens to a blank canvas
From then on, every subsequent open is instant

Starter templates

Four pre-built scaffolds under From Template:

Flowchart — Start (green) → Process (blue) → Decision (yellow) → End (red), connected with orthogonal arrows
Sequence Diagram — two UML lifelines with one solid request + one dashed response message
Class Diagram (UML) — one class swimlane with attributes / separator / methods
Entity Relationship — Customer + Order tables with PK/FK columns and a places 1:N edge

🔒 Encrypted Pad

Per-file encryption with a single profile-wide password. Open a .txt (or anything) → click 🔒 → confirm — file is saved as an encrypted JSON envelope. Re-open it later → password prompt → decrypt in memory → looks like a normal file.


Cipher	AES-256-GCM (authenticated encryption)
KDF	PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA-256, 600 000 iterations (OWASP 2023 minimum)
Compression	gzip before encryption (negates the base64 overhead; typical text files shrink vs the plaintext)
Recovery	256-bit random key, Crockford base32 (~32 readable chars, no ambiguous `O/0/I/L`)
Recovery file	Downloadable `recovery.json` containing the key
Disk format	Inspectable JSON envelope with `_notepp_encrypted: true`, salt, IV, ciphertext
Profile location	`%AppData%\notepp\encryption\profile.json` (wrapped DEK only, never the plaintext)
Threat model	See `ENCRYPTION.md`

🎨 Whiteboard

Powered by Excalidraw 0.18 running in an iframe. Same engine as excalidraw.com — hand-drawn shapes, rough.js style, full keyboard parity.

Rectangle, ellipse, diamond, arrow, line, freedraw, text, image, library, frame, laser pointer
Save lifecycle matches every other tab type — new tabs are in-memory, red dot appears the first time you draw, Ctrl+S pops the Save As dialog. Session auto-save still captures unsaved work for crash recovery.
Open existing .excalidraw files from anywhere — Note++ detects raw Excalidraw exports and routes them correctly
v1 → v2 format migration on load — old auto-backed whiteboards (pre-v1.5.1) still open; first save migrates them out of %AppData%\notepp\Whiteboards\ to a user-picked location

🆚 Compare (File & Folder Diff)

Inspired by Diff.Net / WinMerge / Beyond Compare. Two flavours, both render as new tabs.


Engine (files)	Monaco's built-in `createDiffEditor` (zero new deps)
Engine (folders)	`dir-compare` — content-hash comparison
Tab type	`'diff'` (file) or `'folder-diff'` (folder) with an orange badge
Spec	`DIFF.md`

File compare

Entry points:

File → Compare → Compare Files… — pick two files
File → Compare → Compare with Saved… — compare current tab vs a picked file
Right-click a tab → Select for Compare → right-click another tab → Compare with selected

Inside the diff tab:

Side-by-side or inline view (toggle in the toolbar)
Full Monaco syntax highlighting per file language
↑ Prev / ↓ Next change navigation
⇆ Swap reverses left ↔ right
↻ Reload re-reads both files from disk

Folder compare

Entry point: File → Compare → Compare Folders…

Inside the folder-diff tab:

Two-column side-by-side tree
Summary header: N added · N removed · N differ · N equal
Colour coding:
- 🟢 Green — only on right (added)
- 🔴 Red — only on left (removed)
- 🟡 Yellow — in both, content differs
Click a differing file row → opens that file's diff in a new tab
Show only changes checkbox hides equal entries (on by default)
Skips node_modules / .git / dist / build / out / .next / .cache / .vscode / .idea / __pycache__

🔎 Find / Replace / Mark / Find in Files

Four-tab search panel with a Notepad++-style results panel:

Live decorations (Find)

Yellow bar + ● dot in the gutter on every match line
Orange bar + larger orange dot on the current match
Yellow ticks on the right-side scrollbar minimap for match density
All update live as you type (120 ms debounce)
Status bar shows 3 of 58 matches

Find in Files

Recursive search via the main process — pick a directory, set a filter (*.js,*.md), hit Find in Files
Results grouped per file in the green-headed panel; click any row → opens the file + jumps to the line
Skips the same heavy folders as Compare; caps at 5 000 files / 5 000 hits

Mark

Pick a colour (yellow / cyan / pink / green / orange) → Mark All
Persistent coloured highlight — stacks across multiple Marks with different colours
Survives closing the Find panel; clear with Clear Marks

🎨 Live Preview & Mermaid

Note++ ships with a split-pane preview for HTML and Markdown:

Toggle with Ctrl+Shift+V or the 👁 toolbar button
Resizable drag handle between editor and preview
Zoom controls in the preview header (−, %, +) and Ctrl+Wheel inside the body
⛶ Maximise toggle — preview takes the full editor row, hiding the editor pane
400 ms debounce on keystrokes — no jitter while typing
Markdown parsed by marked.parse(), with a custom renderer that hands mermaid blocks to Mermaid
HTML rendered in a sandboxed <iframe srcdoc> with the Mermaid script injected into <head>
Bare Mermaid files (no fences, starting with graph/flowchart/etc.) auto-detected and rendered directly
.mmd / .mermaid files open in a dedicated Mermaid Live Editor split with templates, SVG/PNG export, and zoom (Ctrl+scroll works too)

Example — a Mermaid block in any .md file:

```mermaid
flowchart LR
    A[Edit] --> B{Save?}
    B -- Yes --> C[Write to disk]
    B -- No  --> D[Discard]
```

…renders live as you type.

🔄 Auto-Update

Note++ ships with electron-updater wired to the GitHub releases provider — silent background download, explicit click-to-install. Default-on, persisted setting.

⚠️ One-time manual upgrade required if you're on 1.7.4 or earlier (Windows). Auto-update freezes at Downloading 100% for that one hop because the Windows trust store rejects our self-signed code-signing certificate's root. Download notepp-win-x64.exe and run it as administrator (right-click → Run as administrator). Auto-update works normally from 1.7.6 onward.

How it surfaces

~8 s after launch (and every 6 h while running) Note++ asks GitHub if there's a newer release
If yes, a pill appears on the far right of the toolbar:
- 🔵 New update available (vX.Y.Z) — download just kicked off
- 🟠 Downloading 42% — live percent ticks as the file streams
- 🟢 Click to update to vX.Y.Z — clickable, hover highlight
Click the green pill → main window hides → a small frameless updater window opens with a progress animation → success card (✓ Upgraded to vX.Y.Z) → ~2 s later the install fires and the new version relaunches

Toggle / manual check

? menu → Check for Updates Automatically (checkbox, persisted to settings.json) — or Check for Updates Now (manual trigger, dev-mode shows a "only runs in installed build" notice).

⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl+N`	New tab
`Ctrl+O`	Open file
`Ctrl+S` / `Ctrl+Shift+S`	Save / Save All
`Ctrl+W`	Close tab
`Ctrl+P`	Quick Open
`Ctrl+Shift+P`	Command Palette
`Ctrl+Shift+G`	Toggle Source Control
`Ctrl+Shift+A`	Toggle AI Assistant
`Ctrl+Alt+Shift+G`	Open Dev Arcade games tab
`Ctrl+Shift+V`	Toggle Live Preview
`Ctrl+F`	Find
`Ctrl+Shift+F`	Format Document
`Ctrl+H`	Replace
`Ctrl+G`	Go to Line
Ctrl+``	Toggle Terminal
`F5`	Run file
`F12`	Go to definition
`Shift+F12`	Go to references
`F2`	Rename symbol
`Ctrl+Alt+W`	Toggle word wrap
`Ctrl+Alt+D`	Toggle dark mode
`Ctrl++` / `Ctrl+-`	Zoom in / out

A full list lives inside the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P).

🗺️ Roadmap

Done

LSP for more languages — Go (gopls), Rust (rust-analyzer), TypeScript (deeper than Monaco's built-in), etc. The registry pattern in lsp-service.js makes each new language a one-entry addition.
Git blame and history view
Hunk-by-hunk apply/reject in Agent mode diff
Windows Hello / macOS Touch ID integration for encryption unlock
MCP client support — connect to community MCP servers (filesystem, GitHub, etc.)
Inline AI completion (Cursor-Tab style) via Ollama FIM
macOS code-signing (currently unsigned; first-launch Gatekeeper warning)
Voice input — proper whisper.cpp native bindings (the previous transformers.js attempt was unstable in Electron and was removed)

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome. The project is small and easy to read end-to-end — renderer.js is the heart of it, main.js is the Electron shell, and each spec file (in features/ — ENCRYPTION.md, GIT.md, AGENT.md, DIFF.md, ROADMAP.md) documents its own feature in detail.

Good first issues:

Pick anything from the Roadmap
Add a new entry to the Command Palette (renderer.js → cmdItems)
Add a Monaco syntax theme
Improve keyboard shortcut coverage
Add a new LSP language registry entry in src/lsp-service.js (e.g. gopls for Go, rust-analyzer for Rust)
Add another draw.io template scaffold to DRAWIO_TEMPLATES in src/renderer.js

Workflow:

Fork the repo
Create a branch (git checkout -b feature/your-thing)
Commit with a clear message
Open a PR against main

🔒 Security

Note++ runs untrusted file content (and HTML previews of it) inside the renderer. The defenses in place:

contextIsolation: true, nodeIntegration: false
HTML preview is rendered inside a sandboxed <iframe srcdoc>
All filesystem and Node access funnels through a narrow preload API
Whiteboard runs in its own iframe with its own CSP, separate from the parent renderer
AI traffic stays local — Ollama runs on 127.0.0.1:11434, no remote calls
Encrypted pad uses standard Web Crypto API primitives — no rolled-our-own crypto

If you find a vulnerability, please open a private security advisory on GitHub rather than a public issue.

📄 License

MIT — see LICENSE for the fine print.

Built with curiosity, Monaco, and a lot of Electron docs.

Created by Yogesh Prajapati

Report a bug • Request a feature • Releases

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 127 Commits
.claude		.claude
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
build		build
features		features
scripts		scripts
src		src
tools		tools
.gitignore		.gitignore
CLAUDE.md		CLAUDE.md
README.md		README.md
build-whiteboard.js		build-whiteboard.js
launch.bat		launch.bat
package-lock.json		package-lock.json
package.json		package.json

Folders and files

Latest commit

History

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Note++ ✦

A developer-focused desktop text editor

⚠️ Important — Existing Windows users on 1.7.4 or earlier

📖 About

📑 Table of Contents

✨ Features

Editing

Compare

Source control

AI Assistant (local, private, free)

Encrypted pad

Whiteboard (hand-drawn)

Diagrams (structured — draw.io)

Productivity

Developer tools

Polish

🚀 Quick Start

Install (prebuilt installer)

Run from source

Build the installer yourself

🧱 Tech Stack

📁 Project Structure

🏛️ Architecture

IPC Pattern

Critical loading order

Whiteboard bundle

draw.io bundle (downloaded on demand)

Language Server Protocol

🔀 Git Integration

🤖 AI Assistant

One-click setup

Chat mode vs Agent mode

🐍 Language Server Protocol (LSP)

📊 draw.io Diagrams

First-use flow

Starter templates

🔒 Encrypted Pad

🎨 Whiteboard

🆚 Compare (File & Folder Diff)

File compare

Folder compare

🔎 Find / Replace / Mark / Find in Files

Live decorations (Find)

Find in Files

Mark

🎨 Live Preview & Mermaid

🔄 Auto-Update

How it surfaces

Toggle / manual check

⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts

🗺️ Roadmap

Done

Next

🤝 Contributing

🔒 Security

📄 License

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