# NotepadX

> NotepadX is a clean, fast, native text editor for macOS. Multi-tab editing, real syntax highlighting for 30+ languages, and a live GitHub-flavored markdown preview with support for Mermaid and Graphviz/DOT diagrams. Free on the Mac App Store; runs on macOS 13 Ventura and later, Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel).

NotepadX fills the gap between TextEdit (too minimal) and Visual Studio Code (too heavyweight) — a modern notepad you can open in under a second, take notes in, and close without ceremony. Built with SwiftUI, NSTextView (Apple's own document engine — same one behind TextEdit, Notes, and Mail), and WKWebView (the Safari rendering engine) for the markdown preview pane. Sandboxed with security-scoped bookmarks for file access.

Publisher: Elysian Edge LLC. Product website: https://notepadx.net. Available from the Mac App Store; no subscription, no telemetry, no cloud account required.

## Product

- [Product page](https://notepadx.net/): Feature overview, screenshots of the editor and markdown preview, and the Mac App Store download link
- [Mac App Store listing](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/notepad-x/id6745561617?mt=12): Free download, ratings, and release notes

## Features

- Multi-tab editor. Drag tabs to reorder within a window, drag off to detach into a new window, drop onto another NotepadX window to move. Chrome-style ⇧⌘T reopens the last-closed window with all its tabs.
- Multi-window. Each window has its own tabs, split ratio, and scroll position. Window sizes are remembered across app restarts (position deliberately isn't — multi-monitor users who unplug displays don't get stranded windows).
- Real syntax highlighting via Highlightr / highlight.js for 30+ languages including Swift, Rust, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Ruby, Java, Kotlin, Scala, C/C++, C#, Objective-C, Bash, PowerShell, SQL, HTML/XML, CSS/SCSS/LESS, JSON, YAML, TOML, Markdown, Dockerfile, Makefile, Lua, Perl, R, Elixir, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell, LaTeX, Terraform/HCL, GraphQL.
- Live GitHub-flavored markdown preview backed by markdown-it. Renders tables with alignment, task lists, footnotes with clickable anchors, blockquotes, fenced code blocks with per-language highlighting, and horizontal rules. All offline — no CDN dependencies.
- Diagrams in markdown. ```mermaid code blocks render as flowcharts, sequence diagrams, pie charts, gantt charts, and ER diagrams via bundled Mermaid.js. ```dot / ```graphviz code blocks render via bundled @hpcc-js/wasm Graphviz. Text in both matches the body font.
- Markdown formatting toolbar (appears only on .md tabs): Undo, Redo, Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, Heading picker (H1–H6, per-tab remembered selection), bulleted list, numbered list, code block, blockquote, link, image, and Print Preview. All operations go through NSTextView's undo protocol so ⌘Z reverts toolbar edits.
- Export. Print, save as PDF, save as Word (.docx) with tables, page-number footer, footnote bookmarks, and rasterized diagrams that fit the page. Export as plain text also available.
- ⌘F Find with match count, per-match yellow highlights (yellow-on-black in dark theme, dark-orange-on-black in light theme), auto-jump to first match, and ⌘G / ⇧⌘G to cycle. Escape dismisses the sheet.
- ⌘1..⌘8 activate the first through eighth tabs; ⌘9 activates the last tab (Safari/Chrome convention). Overflow menu on the tab strip lists every tab by name with unsaved-changes and active-tab indicators.
- Per-tab state restoration. Editor scroll position, cursor location, markdown preview scroll, editor font-size (zoom), and preview zoom are saved per tab and restored on the next launch.
- Per-tab zoom. ⌘+ / ⌘- / ⌘0 zoom only the current tab — editor font size and preview zoom are both per-tab, so zooming one tab doesn't rescale another. Zoom levels persist across relaunches.
- Line-number gutter uses the editor's own monospace font (Menlo by default, or whichever font is picked in Settings) and scales with the editor when you ⌘+ / ⌘-, so the gutter always stays in sync with the code.
- External file watcher. Edit a file from another editor and NotepadX picks it up — clean tabs reload silently, dirty tabs prompt "Keep Mine or Reload from Disk."
- Recently-opened files menu backed by security-scoped bookmarks (survives App Sandbox and file relocations).
- Configurable editor font and size (persisted); ⌘+ / ⌘- / ⌘0 zoom; word-wrap toggle; light and dark themes with ⌥⇧⌘T shortcut.
- Modern thin overlay scrollbars regardless of the system-wide "Show scroll bars" preference; knob shade adapts to the current theme.
- Splitter drag between editor and preview pane is smooth (ghost overlay follows the pointer; panes commit on release, so heavy markdown docs don't reflow during the drag).

## What NotepadX is not

- Not a word processor. No bold/italic rich-text toolbar for arbitrary text — the formatting toolbar applies to markdown syntax only.
- Not a code IDE. No autocomplete, language servers, project sidebar, debugger, or extension system.
- Not a note-management app. No tags, notebooks, backlinks, or graph view. Files live wherever you put them on disk.

## Platform

- macOS 13 Ventura or later
- Universal binary (Apple Silicon and Intel)
- Sandboxed
- Free download from the Mac App Store
- No account, no subscription, no telemetry, no cloud sync