For macOS

The notepad you've been waiting for.

Tabs. Real syntax highlighting. Live markdown preview when you want one. No project sidebar, no workspace files, no opinions about how you organise.

Download on the Mac App Store See it in action ↓

macOS 13 Ventura or later · Universal · Free updates

README.md

example.swift

notes.txt

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# NotepadX

A clean Mac notepad. **Tabs**, syntax highlighting,

and a live markdown preview.

## Why?

Because TextEdit doesn't *do* code,

and VS Code is way too much for a quick note.

## What it has

NotepadX

A clean Mac notepad. Tabs, syntax highlighting, and a live markdown preview.

Why?

Because TextEdit doesn't do code, and VS Code is way too much for a quick note.

What it has

Multi-tab editing with state restoration
Highlight.js syntax colouring
GFM markdown preview

Editor

The right kind of fast.

Launch in under a second. Tabs restore exactly where you left them. Line numbers update at sixty frames per second through a hundred-thousand-line document. The editor uses NSTextView, Apple's own document engine — the same one TextEdit, Notes, and Mail are built on.

Per-tab state restoration across launches
Smart paired characters and selection-wrap
Find with match count and yellow highlights
External-file-change detection and reload

connection_pool.rs

main.rs

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pub struct Pool<B: Backend> {

inner: Arc<Inner<B>>,

}

impl<B: Backend> Pool<B> {

pub async fn acquire(&self) -> Result<Conn> {

// Try the free list first.

let mut free = self.free.lock().await;

Markdown

A live preview that actually renders.

Open a .md file and the preview pane shows the rendered output side-by-side. Full GitHub-flavoured markdown: tables with column alignment, task lists, fenced code blocks with language-aware syntax highlighting, links, blockquotes, horizontal rules. Print or export to PDF, Word, or plain text.

WKWebView-based renderer — same engine as Safari
Native cross-paragraph text selection in the preview
Paginated PDF export with proper page margins
Plain-text export strips markdown markup cleanly

recipe.md

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# Pour-over

| Step | Time |

| --- | --- |

| Bloom | 0:30 |

| Pour 1 | 1:00 |

| Pour 2 | 1:30 |

**Total: 3 min**

Pour-over

Step	Time
Bloom	0:30
Pour 1	1:00
Pour 2	1:30

Total: 3 min

Details

Small touches, everywhere.

Find that highlights

⌘F opens an Apple-style sheet with a match-count indicator, Match Case toggle, and yellow highlights painted on every occurrence in the editor. Browser-style.

Smart paired characters

Open a bracket and the closer is there. Select text and type ( to wrap it. Backspace inside an empty pair clears both halves.

External-file watch

Edit a file from another editor and NotepadX picks it up. Clean tab reloads silently; dirty tab asks Keep Mine or Reload from Disk.

Recent Files menu

A real File → Open Recent submenu backed by security-scoped bookmarks, persisted across launches under App Sandbox.

Trim on save

Trailing whitespace gets stripped on ⌘S — through the text view, so the trim lives on the undo stack if you want it back.

Theme & zoom

Light and dark, ⇧⌘T to flip. ⌘+, ⌘-, ⌘0 zoom the editor. Word Wrap toggles independently. Everything where you'd expect.

What it isn't.

Not a word processor.: No bold/italic toolbar. Just markdown when you want it.
Not a code IDE.: No autocomplete, no language servers, no debugger.
Not a note-management app.: No tags, no notebooks, no graph view. Files go where you put them.

The simplest place that knows how to highlight Python and render a markdown table.

Ready when you are.

Available now on the Mac App Store.

Download on the Mac App Store

Free · macOS 13 Ventura and later · Universal binary