Why Notepad4 Beats Windows 11 Notepad: A Lightweight, Feature‑Rich Alternative

Background

Windows Notepad remains lightweight and instantly launchable, but in Windows 11 it has grown to include tabs, Markdown preview, and AI rewrite without adding core editing capabilities such as syntax highlighting, line numbers, code folding, or fast opening of large files.

Notepad2 lineage

In 2004 Florian Balmer released Notepad2 to differentiate from the built‑in Notepad. It is built on the Scintilla component and adds syntax highlighting, line numbers, encoding conversion, and regular‑expression replace while staying a single‑file, portable executable of only a few hundred KB.

After Notepad2 stopped updating in 2012, Notepad2‑mod continued development until 2017. Two forks then emerged from the Notepad2‑mod code base:

Notepad2 – focuses on performance optimisations.

Notepad3 – focuses on additional features.

Notepad4

In July 2024 the project was officially renamed Notepad4 and is maintained by the developer @zufuliu. Notepad4 inherits the strengths of Notepad2 and Notepad2‑mod, deliberately excludes AI features, cloud synchronization, and a plugin marketplace, and aims to provide a pure‑text editing experience.

Core editing features

Notepad4 supplies the “basic but essential” capabilities missing from Windows Notepad:

Syntax highlighting for many programming languages.

Line numbers displayed in the gutter.

Code folding based on language‑specific block delimiters.

These features enable Notepad4 to serve as a lightweight code editor without the overhead of a full IDE.

Build variants and CPU optimisation

Notepad4 is rewritten in modern C++ and compiled into several CPU‑specific binaries:

SSE2 – compatible with older x86 64 CPUs.

AVX2 – targets most post‑2013 x64 PCs; offers the best balance of performance and compatibility and is the default recommendation.

AVX512 – optimised for Intel server‑grade or select Ultra‑series CPUs.

x64/WIN32 – ensures compatibility with legacy systems, including Windows XP.

ARM64 – built for ARM‑based devices such as Surface Pro X.

Choosing the binary that matches the host CPU yields a noticeable speed advantage when opening very large log or data files.

Encoding handling

The editor defaults to UTF‑8 but automatically detects legacy encodings such as GB2312, Big5, and Shift‑JIS, minimizing garbled text. The status bar continuously shows the current file’s encoding and line‑ending format (CR, LF, or CRLF).

Special builds

HD build – optimised for high‑DPI displays.

i18n build – includes multiple language packs; for example, zh‑Hans for Simplified Chinese and zh‑Hant for Traditional Chinese.

Users select the appropriate build according to their system architecture and display requirements.

Visual reference