Switching from Notepad++

Birchpad is not a fork of Notepad++: it is written from scratch in Rust and is not affiliated with the Notepad++ project. But its first goal is to match Notepad++, so that switching needs no relearning.

What is the same

• Menus and their names. File, Edit, Search, View, Encoding, Language, Settings, Tools, Macro, Run — with the same items where you expect them.
• Keyboard shortcuts. Ctrl+D duplicates a line, Ctrl+Shift+F finds in files, F2 goes to a bookmark, Ctrl+Shift+R records a macro. The full list is in the shortcuts table.
• The command line. -n, -c, -p, -l, -ro, -multiInst, -nosession and -openSession work as in Notepad++; other options are accepted and ignored, so file associations and scripts keep working. See Command line.
• Search modes Normal, Extended and regular expressions with Boost’s replacement syntax ($1, \U…\E), and Find in Files filters such as *.cpp !\build.
• Sessions, backups of unsaved work, bookmarks, marks in five styles, change history in the margin.

Bringing your setup over

What	How
Open files	File → Load Session… opens Notepad++’s session.xml, with the unsaved copies from its backup folder.
Projects	Project Panels keep projects in Notepad++’s .workspace files — the same file opens in both editors.
Themes	Settings → Import → Import Style Themes… copies Notepad++ XML themes in; you can also drop them into the themes folder. See Themes and styles.
User defined languages	Language → User Defined Language → Import… copies UDL files into the userDefineLangs folder.
Auto-completion	Notepad++ API files (autoCompletion/<language>.xml) go into the autoCompletion folder next to the settings. See User languages and auto-completion.
Run commands	$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH), $(CURRENT_WORD) and the other variables work in the Run menu.

What differs

• Settings in TOML. Instead of config.xml, a readable settings.toml you can keep in Git and share. Settings → Preferences… edits the same file and keeps your comments. See Settings.
• A find panel, not a dialog. Find, Replace, Mark and Find in Files open as a panel at the bottom of the window and never cover the text.
• Printing through the browser. File → Print… opens the document in its theme’s colors in the browser’s print dialog, which can also save a PDF.
• Columns count cells. Wide characters (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) take two columns, as in a terminal; Notepad++ counts characters.
• Three systems. The same settings, themes and macros work on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Not there yet

Plugins (the next phase, running as WebAssembly), the Window menu, tab colors and pinned tabs, fonts in themes, and a dark mode for the interface independent of the editor theme. All of them are on the roadmap.